


All You See is My Ghost

by minnabird



Series: fate, i found a place for us [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Developing Friendships, Double Agents, Gen, Hope vs. Despair, Kidnapping, Lightsaber Battles, Minor Character Death, Not really but tagged for safety: Ezra is pretty resigned to not living through this, Original Female Knight of Ren, Podfic Welcome, Post-Episode: s04e15-16 Family Reunion – and Farewell, Reunions, Sith Ezra Bridger, Space Battles, Suicidal Thoughts, the knights of ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23954596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minnabird/pseuds/minnabird
Summary: He was once Ezra Bridger. But for five years, he's been Jaden Mar, Knight of Ren, serving under Snoke in the nascent First Order. Not because he believes in the Dark Side, but because he believes it's the best way to fight this evil: get inside, and try to stop it. His only ally in this is Thrawn, once his enemy, now his fellow double agent and a Grand Admiral again.But during the time he has been separated from the galaxy, Light has returned to it, along with the Jedi. He's been lost in the darkness for years, but when he meets Luke Skywalker and his old friend Sabine Wren, he begins to feel what he's given up anew. He's going to face Snoke, and probably die.Luke and Sabine have other plans.
Relationships: Ezra Bridger & Luke Skywalker, Ezra Bridger & Sabine Wren, Ezra Bridger & Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Series: fate, i found a place for us [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555858
Comments: 15
Kudos: 41
Collections: Star Wars Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I have a few acknowledgements to get out of the way first; without these folks this fic would not be here in this shape.
> 
> Coaster (@coasterchild on Twitter) - For the AU idea, enthusiastic plotting, and permission to play in this sandbox  
> ShaeTiann – For talking to me about Thrawn’s investigations and physics  
> Corde_And_Dorme – For looking at the original beginning and telling me it needed a better hook  
> shadowsong26 – For much-needed eleventh hour beta work  
> Amrita_vein – Art! Ahhh!  
> The SWBB discord in general for commiseration, word sprints, brainstorming, and just generally being a great place to hang out and write fic
> 
> Anything that seems wrong is all me.

“All right, Sabine. Show me what you’ve got.” Luke Skywalker settled into a chair beside the woman, who reached down to turn on a projector.

Outside, he could hear the laughter of Temple students at play. Curtains blocked out enough light for them to see the holos, but bright streaks of sun still leaked through. Even with so much happy life nearby, Luke felt a cold shiver at what he saw.

The image was in blue-washed monochrome. “Captured from the nursery cam,” Sabine murmured. Two figures stood framed by a broken window, both helmeted and cloaked. One held a nasty-looking vibroblade, but Luke’s eyes were immediately drawn to the second. They held a lightsaber in an easy, casual guard position.

“No faces?” Luke asked.

“Not that I can find. The premier’s security team sent me something from earlier in the day from the lower levels, but the image quality on those cameras isn’t as good. And they never take off the helmets.” There was a sour tone in Sabine’s voice.

“Not Mandalorian,” Luke said carefully. “Right?”

“No. Never seen a Mandalorian helmet shaped like these. They’re not a uniform, either.” She isolated images of the two helmets and blew them up larger. The lightsaber-wielder’s helmet was sleek and almost insectoid. The other was blocky and intimidating.

“No, you’re right. Two different styles. That doesn’t give us anything.”

Luke sat back to think. Sabine had come in person to bring him news of a kidnapping on Ilda; one of Ahsoka’s contacts had alerted them to it, and they had stopped to investigate. Luke knew the children’s parents. They had contacted him when their son first began moving his blocks without touching them. Hearing about the kidnapping had been troubling enough; put together with the presence of a lightsaber, it formed a nasty picture.

“I’ll start contacting families I know with Force-sensitive children,” Luke said. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Instead of turning immediately to his calls, Luke looked at the helmets again. Neither of them mimicked Vader’s style, but both in their way exuded the same menace. _Let it just be another half-baked cult,_ he thought to himself. _I can deal with a cult._

* * *

_One Month Earlier_

“The mission was successful,” Jaden said. “Dûr was just weak.”

Snoke’s mind wrapped around his, an oily presence that sent chills down Jaden’s spine. He let the events of the mission float to the surface. An artifact retrieval: usually Dûr’s beat, but the thing was hidden in a private archive at the center of a duke’s palace complex. Jaden was better at keeping his missions quiet than the other Knights.

Impressions played out in his mind’s eye: Dûr overwhelming the guards’ minds, Jaden’s triumph as the security grid went dark, the dark roil of energy around the first holocron Jaden had seen in years. He felt Snoke’s attention snag on that word, and the creeping sensation of him following the thread of that thought. As vividly as he could, Jaden called to life the memory of Maul’s Sith holocron whispering to him and promising him knowledge. 

Snoke considered the memory for a moment, then returned to the mission. He found the sudden flare of Jaden’s frustration as bounty hunters halted their escape. The scene shaped itself around the sharp retort of Dûr’s heavy blaster making openings for Jaden to close in with his vibroblade. Jaden didn’t see Dûr leave an opening of his own, only felt when Dûr’s Force signature burned bright with sudden pain and then collapsed to a faint flicker.

The rest was a flurry of Jaden fighting his way back to Dûr, the holocron his only goal. The fear of Snoke’s punishment if he failed propelled him forward; he knew nothing but grim necessity until his ship hit hyperspace. As they reached his wash of relief at his escape, Snoke withdrew from his mind

Jaden opened his eyes as Snoke leaned back in his absurdly high chair. They were alone in Snoke’s audience chamber, Snoke in his chair and Jaden standing below him, two figures at the end of a long expanse of bare black stone. The place was designed to make anyone look small—anyone but Snoke, that was.

Neither of them spoke for a moment, and then Jaden pulled the holocron from his pocket and held it out to Snoke. It lifted from his hand, floating between them, and the malevolent red light pulsing inside it washed across Snoke’s scarred face. 

Snoke’s eyes raked across Jaden. He felt it as an almost physical scouring, paired with a rough final probe of his mind. He flinched, and Snoke’s eyes left Jaden’s face. 

“You may go,” he said. 

Jaden bowed and swept out of the room. He held himself steady and tall all through the corridors to his quarters. Passing Stormtroopers briefly blocked his path, and he shoved them casually aside. 

They saw only a Knight of Ren. He was only a menacing black helmet, the sweep of a black cloak, and an air of fury and disdain that cleared the space around him. “Sir,” one of them stammered apologetically, and then they were behind him.

When the door to his quarters shut behind him, Jaden sank down onto the bed, trying to draw in a deep breath. It caught in his throat, and he tried again. His mind felt raw after that last push. _He didn’t get anything you didn’t want him to get,_ he reminded himself. He would have felt it if Snoke slipped past the outer edges of his mind and through the shields hidden underneath. He was sure of it.

Reporting to Snoke was exhausting. His master didn’t always delve into Jaden’s mind, but he had to be wary of what he let come to the surface every time. He still wasn’t sure how much the man sensed passively, and Jaden had a lot to hide.

Secret number one: he had only been frustrated with the bounty hunters for their timing. He had placed the bounty on Dûr himself, though they had not known that. 

Secret number two: during the long watches of his hyperspace journey, Jaden had spent several fruitless hours trying to copy data off the holocron. It wasn’t a technology he understood, but it had been worth a try. Any information Snoke wanted could be useful.

Secret number three, and this was the big one, the one Snoke had almost found a link to tonight: Jaden Mar had once been a Jedi and a Rebel. Years ago, his name had been Ezra Bridger. It was the foundation on which all his other secrets were built.

But Snoke had not found out, and Jaden always had work to do. He pushed himself up from the bed and left his quarters again. He was still unsettled, but he knew where he could vent some of that. He raised his gauntlet with its built-in commlink and keyed in a code. “Nieta,” he said.

Her sour voice came through. “You’re back.”

“In one piece and ready for a spar. Unless you’ve got your head too deep in a datapad for a rematch?”

She scoffed. “Just get to the training room.”

Koresi Nieta might be his only choice for a fight right now, but she was a good choice. The Devaronian was as quick and deadly with bare hands as she was with a lightsaber. Better yet, she was determined to wipe the floor with Jaden. It offended her that they were so evenly matched.

They threw themselves into the spar with hardly a word. He let the remains of his fear fuel his muscles and sank into the physical exercise with relief. At first, they only danced around each other. Finally, Nieta grew frustrated and began to come at Jaden with everything she had.

Jaden gasped in pain as she slammed him into the wall. It stopped him only for a moment, and then he was twisting, hooking his ankle around Nieta’s to throw her off balance. She spun away and Jaden raised his hand, wrapping his fingers around empty air.

She snarled, her sharp teeth bright against bruise-red skin, even as she struggled to take in air.

“Nieta, Nieta,” Jaden said. “Need a minute to catch your breath?”

Nieta didn’t reach up to scrabble at the invisible hand on her throat. Instead, she snapped out an open hand and a towel rack to the left of Jaden lifted off the floor and crashed into him. Jaden shouted in frustration as he fell to his knees. He pushed the rack off him in the next moment and surged to his feet—and straight into his Nieta’s charge.

She was a blur of sharp, Force-aided punches as she drove him into the wall again. He grunted, but he could take the bruises. She paused, seeming to realize the same thing, and her eyes locked on his helmet.

There was a hand at his throat, thin fingers scrabbling, and then she tugged off his helmet. His dark hair fell over his right eye, but it was buzzed on the back and left side, revealing the twin scars slashing across his cheekbone and an eye burning the poison-yellow of the Fallen.

“So easy,” she said, and pressed a hand to his bare cheek.

Pain bloomed inside Jaden’s head, starting under Nieta’s hand and sending white-hot fingers of agony down his spine. His knees buckled, and he felt Nieta’s breath on his cheek. “And you call yourself a Knight of Ren,” she hissed. “You will never be more than a masterless apprentice, _ren’jidai_.”

Jaden lashed out, every ounce of willpower thrown into a Force push, and Nieta went skidding across the floor, landing in a crouch. “At least I don’t waste my time in pointless mind games.” He turned and strode out of the practice room. He reached out as he passed his helmet and it leapt into his hand.

By the time he reached the corridor, he moved as if his nerves weren’t screaming, his face set in a thunderous expression that would surprise no one.

The problem was, the mind games worked.

 _Ren’jidai_. Reborn Jedi. Nieta had taunted him with that name since their early days on the _Revenant_. The marks of his Jedi training had shown clearly, then, when he had still bothered to join in sparring with practice blades and the dark side of the Force hadn’t yet twisted its claws so deep in him. Nieta had come to the First Order just after he did. Somewhere, she had studied the old Sith tongue, and spoke it like it was her native language. Superior knowledge was one of her favorite weapons.

It was the word _ren_ that stuck like thorns under his skin. Snoke had named his twisted order of knights for the rebirth of the Sith, but the equivalent word in Basic didn’t capture the whole meaning. _Ren_ was not for the pure rebirth of the starbird when it emerged from the heart of a sun cleansed and new. It was not a word for the gentle haunting Kanan had managed, somehow joining his intent with the Loth-wolf. _Ren_ meant you were reborn as a burning thing, reborn for vengeance and with power in your grip, less resurrected than resurgent.

Nieta meant _ren’jidai_ as a mocking reminder of his origins, but the other edge of that blade cut Jaden instead. A Jedi could not be _ren_. When he shed the name Ezra and became Jaden, he gave up his claim to that title.

A soft beep came through the commlink in his gauntlet. That particular sound meant only one person. He stepped into a fresher to answer it. “Proteus.”

The voice that came through was distorted. “I return tomorrow at sixteen hundred hours. Are you able to meet?”

“Hello to you, too,” Jaden said. At the chilly silence on the other end, he sighed. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

He clicked off the call. Asking for a meeting first thing on arrival could only mean a mission. He would be happy to leave the Fleet again.

As his shuttle glided smoothly out of the hangar, Jaden turned to watch the _Revenant_ grow smaller behind him. It floated against the stars like a predatory fish, smaller ships schooling around it. The Fleet had only three Star Destroyers: the _Revenant_ , the _Ruthless_ , and the _Rectifier_ , Sloane’s flagship. They remained together as part of Rectifier Squadron, the main body of the Fleet.

Now, Jaden set off into the black to rendezvous with Thrawn. He led his own squadron, and they never quite joined the rest of the Fleet. It looked nothing like Rectifier Squadron, or indeed like an Imperial force at all. That was the point. Thrawn had built it from the ground up, capturing and purchasing the types of ships that would not look out of place in a pirate fleet or a planetary militia. They could pass unremarked into more populated regions of the galaxy, gathering supplies, information, anything the First Order might need. 

As Jaden’s shuttle approached the _Lycaon_ , he appreciated Thrawn’s choice of flagship. It was a massive old Calamari cruiser, and the sight of it soothed Jaden. He could pretend for a moment that he was approaching a Rebel ship. Living on a Star Destroyer did not make him more comfortable with them.

Thrawn was waiting for him, his arms folded behind him. An honor guard of Stormtroopers stood at his back.

“Thrawn,” Jaden called as he started down the ramp. Thrawn waited until they stood face to face to acknowledge him.

“Mar,” he said, bowing his head infinitesimally. A small smile played over his lips. “Come to toast to my victory?”

“When do I not?” Jaden said, clapping Thrawn on the shoulder. Thrawn’s stiff posture relaxed, and his smile became positively genial as he held out a hand for Jaden to go first. Jaden could feel a ripple of surprise from one of the Stormtroopers. They must be new. Thrawn dismissed his honor guard with a gesture, and the two of them turned to amble towards Thrawn’s command room.

Jaden waited until the door was locked and he heard the buzz of activated privacy shields to sigh and tug off his helmet. He threw himself down into one of the soft chairs placed for conversation. “I hope you weren’t joking about that toast,” he said.

Thrawn’s only response was a sharp exhale through his nose. Jaden never could tell if it was laughter or exasperation. Jaden sprawled deeper into the chair, letting the false exuberance bleed away.

“Do we have to do the buddy-buddy thing? Can’t I just be here on business?” he added.

“Do you have orders that bring you here?” Thrawn wasn’t looking at him, pouring two small glasses of honey-colored liquor.

“No.” Despite his disgruntled tone, Jaden took his glass with a nod of thanks.

Thrawn leaned against the other chair. “We are friends. While the people on this ship occupy themselves with that curiosity, they forget to wonder what business a Knight of Ren has here so frequently.”

Jaden just leaned his head back and groaned. 

“Why the good mood?” Jaden cracked one eye, and caught Thrawn’s raised eyebrow. “Usually you don’t indulge in this level of histrionics unless things are going smoothly.”

“I can’t be pleased to see you?” Jaden said. “I thought we were friends.” When Thrawn was silent, he offered, “Dûr. Finally got him, although the bounty hunters had some pretty terrible timing.”

“Ah, so a victory for you as well.” Thrawn raised his glass, then set it aside.

“So, what’s your big news?” Jaden hooked an arm over the back of the chair, turning to watch as Thrawn went to what was, by all appearances, an abstract metal sculpture. Several such pieces dotted the office; Thrawn hadn’t given up his fascination with art. His fingers followed a curve towards the base of the sculpture, and he pressed the pad of one finger carefully against the metal’s surface. A drawer in the base opened silently.

“The raid on Heress V went well,” Thrawn said. “Better, I finally received word from the contact your primary project has been waiting on.”

Jaden sat bolt upright. “And?”

Thrawn pulled a dataspike out of the hidden drawer. “Coordinates, code phrases, everything you will need to pick up the shipment.” He joined Jaden, settling into the chair facing his, and held the chip out to him. “Your master will have a mission for one of you soon. I was able to find out the location of one of the targets of that mission, and I directed our friend there. You must be the one to go.”

“I’ll make sure of it,” Jaden said, taking the dataspike and tucking it safely away. “Is this…” He hesitated, then met Thrawn’s eyes. “Is this it? Is it starting?”

“Not the endgame,” Thrawn said. He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands in front of him. His eyes were utterly unreadable. “But for your part? Yes, I rather think it is. This is the last piece we need to take Snoke off the board.”

Fear and determination fought inside Jaden, tying his stomach in knots. “What’s the plan?” he asked. “How is this going to get me an opportunity to defeat Snoke?”

“Simple,” Thrawn said. “The Force is his most powerful ally and weapon. We just need to isolate him from it.”

Jaden stared at him. “How?”

“Have you ever heard of a curious creature called the ysalamir?”

* * *

  
_IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A mixed media drawing with bright white highlights contrasting vivid, chalky base colors. Jaden and Thrawn sit side by side in front of a window showing a sky bright with stars. Jaden is dressed in dark armor and a tattered cowl. Thrawn is in a pristine white Imperial officer-style uniform. Both wear the symbol of the First Order on their sleeves. Jaden looks sideways at Thrawn, who is holding a dataspike and looking thoughtfully at it._  
_art by[Amrita_Vein](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amrita_Vein/pseuds/Amrita_Vein)_

* * *

The summons from Snoke came quicker than Jaden had expected. His nerves jangled as he waited with Nieta outside the audience chamber.

They both wore heavy cloaks and helmets; a Knight didn’t go before Snoke bare-faced. Nieta’s helmet was sleek and pointed in the front, managing to appear both delicate and predatory. She turned her head silently towards him, and they went in together. They sank to one knee in perfect synchronization.

“Rise, my Knights,” Snoke said, his voice curling through the red-lit room like a snake. They were the only three present in this cavernous room, a great gulf of space between Nieta and Jaden and their master. “My seeker has been triumphant.”

Nieta’s shoulders straightened, her sudden keen interest clear in the taut lines of her body, but she was silent. Snoke’s eyes went to her anyway, and he smiled almost kindly. “Yes. Suitable initiates have been found, each full of raw potential, waiting to be shown what power looks like.”

Jaden had to control his sudden revulsion, the anger churning in his gut. Snoke would feel it, but he hoped that he wouldn’t understand it. Initiates. What he meant was Force-sensitive children and adolescents, young enough to be molded. Just like Hux’s Stormtroopers. Just like the Inquisitors’ victims, the younglings he had once helped save.

“Once, more of you stood in this room,” Snoke said. “Only a few years ago, the Knights of Ren numbered five. Each of the others failed me. Dûr has now failed me as well. Perhaps one of you will finally prove worthy to be my apprentice.”

“Send me,” Jaden said harshly, before Nieta could speak. He stepped forward, balling his fists at his sides.

“It was my project.” Nieta’s voice snapped out like a whip, and she raised her head to look at Snoke. “I am the better fighter. Mar won’t even take up a lightsaber.”

“I don’t need one,” Jaden gritted. He did not have to explain himself to Nieta.

“ _I_ suggested it, _I_ programmed the probes, _I_ sent out—”

“Yes, you proved your skill at handling things from the Fleet,” Jaden broke in. “But I have years of scouting missions. You’ve never been on a long mission. You don’t know the first thing about blending in.”

Snoke shifted, and the two broke off their argument, immediately falling into watchful stances. “Go.” His eyes locked on Nieta. “Gather the initiates. Kill any who stand in your way.” His eyes slid sideways to Jaden. “Both of you, together. The initiates are too important to entrust to one Knight alone.”

Nieta waited until they were in the hallway to turn on Jaden. “This is _my_ mission,” she said, her voice low and laced with strange harmonics through her helmet vocoder. “You will follow my lead.”

“Right,” Jaden said, not bothering to hide his insincerity. “Follow your lead.” He gave her a sarcastic salute as they parted ways. “Better get to requisitioning a ship, _leader_ ,” he called after her. “Try not to get one that screams ‘Empire.’”

Jaden drifted through the next days on the _Revenant_ on automatic. If he thought too long on what lay at the end of the journey ahead, fear would swamp him. There was too much to do before then, and he would need all of his focus once he was out there with Nieta.

The priority had to be acquiring the ysalamiri and keeping them secret. He couldn’t afford to mitigate whatever damage Nieta caused. It would be difficult enough to hide his actions on a small ship without them clashing over the mission.

He knelt in the unforgiving dark of his quarters the night before their departure and closed his eyes. Reaching for the comfort of meditation was too dangerous inside the Fleet. Here, his conflict camouflaged him, made him into one of the people he was here to stop. With shaking fingers, he reached for an invisible seam on his gauntlet and let the tiny crystal fall from its secret compartment. He held onto the kyber until it dug hot spikes of pain into his palm.

He begged the silence, “Give me something. It doesn’t have to be a vision. Anything. Tell me what I have to do.”

For a moment, he felt only the hollow certainty that he would die at the end of this. But then, memory washed over him, cool and full of light.

* * *

“What are you doing, kid?”

Ezra looked up and wasn’t particularly startled to see Kanan sitting across from him. He never saw him with his hair shorn short, the way it was at the end. It was always in the nerftail he had worn for so many years, his face bare and scarred, his voice so warm Ezra ached.

“Meditating,” Ezra said, knowing it wasn’t the answer Kanan was looking for. “What’s it look like?”

He knew it wasn’t really Kanan in these meditations. More than likely, whatever the Force or his heart were trying to tell him, he was the best mouthpiece. A voice of wisdom.

As always, Ezra said, “I’m exactly where I need to be. Keeping Lothal safe. Keeping Thrawn off the playing field.”

Kanan held out a hand, and something bright and flickering lit on his outstretched fingers. The bird’s wing plumage came to a distinctive pair of points; half-folded, the wings framed its crested head in a crescent shape. Ezra’s eyes widened. He had never seen one of these birds before, but he knew what it was from Sabine’s drawings: a starbird,

And just like that, the meditation tilted into a vision.

The starbird leapt into the air, and in a flap of its wings Ezra stood in a different room. The floor shook; dust poured from the ceilings; he glimpsed a woman in a tattered Imperial uniform. As he flailed for a handhold, a jolt of the ground sent him reeling. When he recovered, he stood face-to-face with the Emperor, as he had hoped never to do again. A chill seized Ezra. There was a death-mask grin beneath that hood.

“Burn it,” the Emperor hissed. “Burn the galaxy and let whoever is left live in the ashes. A new Empire awaits us, beyond the known…”

Ezra turned, trying to understand who the Emperor was speaking to, and saw the vacuum of space. A Star Destroyer dropped in from hyperspace. Then another. And another, and another, and another.

Another voice: “No.”

Rae Sloane, the architect of the First Order, stood tall and straight. Jaden knew her now, though he had not then. “We will build a new Empire, yes. But we build it on the foundations of the old. True. Right.” She smiled, and the coldness in it matched the ice in Ezra’s veins. “Eternal.”

And behind her, Snoke stepped forward, his presence a twisted, black thing, clawing at Ezra’s mind. “We will become stronger than ever before,” he said, his voice a rumble long and low enough to cross centuries. The sound of it nearly sent Ezra to his knees.

The starbird landed on Ezra’s shoulder, and strength and light poured into him, pushing against the dark. A voice rang in his head. _Rise, Ezra Bridger. Something new is coming, and your fight is not here._

* * *

Jaden rose, oxygen filling his lungs, his muscles true and strong, his mind free even if he was not. He had left Ezra Bridger behind for the opportunity to stop Snoke and the First Order before they could cover the galaxy in the Empire’s shadow once more.

“If I die, then he dies with me,” he vowed. “It’s up to me to stop this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on canonicity: this fic is canon-compliant if you squint and also if you ignore the Rise of Kylo Ren comic. I started plotting it before that comic came out (and before TROS came out!) and the Knights of Ren stuff was pretty crucial to the plot. Also, I prefer my headcanon. 
> 
> It takes place 11 years after the Battle of Yavin.


	2. Chapter Two

“I never got it.”

Nieta turned a blank look on him. Jaden ignored the lack of invitation and pressed on.

“Why kids? There’s a galaxy full of people who never figured out they could train one way or the other. Why not go after them?”

There was a pause. Nieta curled over the ship’s controls, her gaze distant. “Turning anyone older never turned out as well. The fallen Jedi were all cracked at the foundation. Weak.”

Chills prickled up the back of Jaden’s neck. “That experience talking?”

Nieta’s jaw worked. “The Inquisitorius tried many recruitment methods. The first generation were the Jedi Order’s rejects. My generation had real power. Just look at the first Grand Inquisitor—defeated by a single untrained warrior!” She flashed Mar a disdainful look, and he startled at her eyes on him. She had been an Inquisitor. Of course she had. It was just old instincts making him feel like prey. Her eyes narrowed. “Although I suppose you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Last I checked, the Inquisitors disappeared when the Empire fell,” Jaden snapped. “I don’t see them flocking to the First Order, ready to take on the galaxy.” He stood to circle around and get a better look at her. He had never really thought about how old she was, but he had a few years on her—maybe three or four. “You were one of the kids they took, weren’t you?” he said.

Nieta lifted her chin, pride glittering in her eyes. “I was the Tenth Sister. What were you? Because what I see is a vagabond, a nobody, taught a little and left to wander the galaxy alone.”

Jaden refused to let that sting. He had chosen to walk this road, just like Kanan had chosen to die to save them. Whatever he had been or lost, this was where he was now. “I’m on the same level you are,” he said.

With a swift movement, Nieta stood and closed the distance between them. Leaning in, she said, “I’ll give you a lesson for free, Mar. Power isn’t about what you have. It’s about what you hold over other people. Those children are an opportunity. And so are you.”

Jaden met her eyes, fire burning into fire. “You think I’ll just stand by and be a stepping stone.”

“I think you’ll fight,” Nieta said. “And I think you’ll lose. A Sith master has only one apprentice, you see. Anyone else is just a tool in his hand, and you seem content to be just that.”

* * *

Thrawn stood in the midst of a gently-glowing star chart, turning slowly to take in the twisting lines of safe routes, the outlines of gravity wells, and the stipples and swirls that marked known obstacles. At the center, where he stood, was the Fleet’s location. Crude as it was, this chart was more detailed than it had been even five years ago, updated as ships and probes brought back their reports. But he was still searching for a glaring omission.

“What is our purpose in remaining here?” he said softly, glancing up at the droid who waited at the edge of the room. 

The droid remained silent, his domed head tracking him. He was used to Thrawn thinking aloud.

The main Fleet had remained near-stationary in this empty segment of the Unknown Regions for years. It was just on the edge of the true wilds, a stable region only a few tricky jumps removed from better-known hyperspace lanes. Still, the location limited them. 

“Surely, it would be better to hide somewhere with access to the HoloNet. The Rebellion snuck secret communications through the Imperial network for years. The New Republic is likely to have at least as many holes in their data security, ripe to be exploited.”

“If courier droids were not necessary, my presence would be questioned more,” put in the droid. His voice was low, gravelly as droid voices went. 

Thrawn smiled thinly. “Yes, Eesix, it has benefited you. Still, relying upon a rudimentary subspace network for all communication limits our capabilities. Our distance from habitable worlds and trade networks puts an undue strain on our ability to supply the fleet…”

“Have you not built your position on that gap?”

“Mm.” Thrawn rubbed his chin, turning another slow circle. “Yes, quite convenient. But not, you will admit, a sound strategy for a would-be invasion force. No, the purpose of our hiding out here seems to be to wait. But to wait for what?”

Eesix shifted from one foot to the other, a gesture he had picked up from some human along his years of service. Nominally a personal assistant droid, he had come to Thrawn with a strange collection of knowledge and habits. “As ever, I have no answer to this question. If you will remember, you asked me to retrieve data on ships that left the fleet without filing a destination.”

Thrawn looked at Eesix sharply. “Report, then.”

Eesix shuffled forward and plugged into the projector for the star chart. Points of light began to appear, first a few, then more filling in. He joined Thrawn where he stood and reached out to point at the icon that marked the _Rectifier_ ’s position. “These are all ships that originate from Rectifier Squadron. Each dot represents an instance when a ship pinged off one of the subspace relays. At first, I tried to plot the course of each trip individually, but it soon proved to be a waste of time.”

“Not enough information?” Thrawn said. The ships could only go so far before they lost touch with the relays entirely, even though there were a number placed along the better-charted paths used by the Fleet to get back into the galactic interior. All of the dots from Eesix’s data clustered close to the Fleet. In fact, they clustered much closer than Thrawn would typically expect. He leaned in, frowning. “They stopped using the relays at all after the second jump point.”

The relays weren’t just for active communication. They sent data packets from stationary probes that sped up navigation calculations and provided advance warnings for the storms and magnetic interference that plagued some regions. Most ships bound for the interior pinged off the relays right up until they lost touch entirely, usually around the fourth or fifth jump.

“Precisely,” Eesix said. “So I began looking at pings I had disregarded in my early attempts at course-charting. Several of the ships had made contact with the relay network on the opposite side of the Fleet from their apparent course.”

“When?” Thrawn said. “In relation to the other pings you noted, when?”

Eesix was silent a moment, and then most of the lights blinked out. Timestamps appeared beside the handful remaining. “All of the pings bound for the galactic interior occurred over a twenty-four hour period.” Eesix enlarged the last of those timestamps. “Note the time.” He returned it to normal size, then enlarged the single ping from the opposite side of the fleet.

“Sixteen hours later,” Thrawn said. He circled it, eyebrows raised. “Are each of the previously disregarded pings like this?”

“Every one,” Eesix said.

“Someone,” Thrawn said thoughtfully, “is sending ships deeper into the Unknown Regions, and doesn’t want anyone to know about it. Are any of those ships on assignment in the interior right now?”

Eesix took a few moments. “ _Forex_ is on a supply run, and _Eminent_ is part of the diplomatic mission to Paks.”

“Good. Put out bounties. I want their ship logs,” Thrawn said.

* * *

In the end, hyperlanes determined their first stop. Given better information, Jaden would not have started with Ilda. It was a small moon, the only habitable astronomical object in the system, and seemingly every inch of it was covered in urban sprawl. While the traffic hid their ship and let them pass easily into the crowds of other newcomers, the actual location of their target posed a problem.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Jaden said, looking up at the gleaming spire in front of them. It stood alone at the center of a ring road, on a flat, unbroken lawn of curling blue grass. Thousands of windows peered in at the spire from buildings facing the ring road. The spire itself was smooth, silvery-purple stone and transparisteel.

The intelligence had said the kid was the son of Ilda’s premier. It had not told them that the premier lived inside the central government building. 

“If you’re so good at blending in, get us in,” Nieta said.

But Jaden was ignoring her, his eyes drawn away from the spire of the government building to the airspeeder traffic flowing like grey rivers above the city. The spire lay at the center of an empty triangle bounded by three lanes, but it wasn’t so far away…

“No,” Jaden said. “I say we wait till nightfall.”

“We could be done with this before nightfall,” Nieta said.

“Or we could steal a speeder and take the path with less guards,” Jaden said. “Up to you.”

Nieta glared at the spire, but even as they watched, people were moving in and out of the building. At this time of day, it would still be humming with all the work of administration. “Fine,” she snapped.

“Why don’t you try to find out where the kid would be,” Jaden said. “I’ll go see about that speeder.” He nodded to her and turned, starting towards the nearest road. Hijacking a speeder would be no problem; he’d been doing it since he was a kid. But if he didn’t rush, he wouldn’t have to know the details of how Nieta got her information.

It was better that way.

By the time he and Nieta joined the flow of traffic, Jaden knew his route. The west lane was the closest in elevation and lateral distance to the spire. He did his best impression of an impatient and reckless driver, zooming around speeders to get ahead of them, ducking just over and under the flow of traffic to get ahead of others. When they got close, he got into position near the edge of the lane, but not at the very outside.

He narrowed his eyes, his awareness spreading along the length of the airspeeder. There was the stabilizer fin, the fasteners that held it onto the speeder already perilously loose. He accelerated, eyes on a gap in traffic at the edge of the lane. With a hard mental yank, he broke the stabilizer off the speeder just as he jerked the yoke to the right.

The airspeeder went spinning out of control, hurtling through the gap and towards the spire. There was a brief pileup behind them, but Jaden ignored it, all of his concentration on where he needed to go.

He let go of the yoke, raising his hands with palms outwards. He closed his eyes, feeling the rapidly approaching building.

He pushed.

With an ear-splitting metallic screech, the airspeeder skidded along the transparisteel exterior of the spire, its momentum broken just enough to avoid smashing to pieces. He held it against the building, and they rode the crash until Nieta said, “Here!”

He saw the balcony. He reached out, hand grasping, and the metal railing bent and twisted as if under a great force. Teeth gritted, he pulled the speeder safely onto the balcony, where it bobbed weakly on its damaged repulsorlifts.

Nieta stepped up to the window overlooking the balcony and drew her lightsaber. With a hiss and a flare of red, it ignited, throwing harsh light along the lines of her face. In the dark like this, she was a being of stark red and black: skin and horn spots, hair and lizard-skin tunic, saber and heart. She plunged the lightsaber into the transparisteel and began to carve a white-hot circle.

Inside, lights popped on and alarms blared. She kicked the circle of transparisteel, and it crashed to the floor. Jaden and Nieta leapt through the gap, and Nieta cut down the droid who rose to meet them before it could speak.

In the pulsing lights of the room, the child huddled wide-eyed on his bed.

Nieta crossed the room in a few long strides and grabbed the child around the middle, bundling him against her shoulder. He writhed and struggled, but her grip was strong. She was just stepping outside when a door at the other end of the balcony and two guards poured out, blasters leveled.

Jaden watched from the hole she had cut as Nieta held her lightsaber across her body and the child’s. “Go on,” she said. “Shoot, as if it will do you any good.”

They didn’t have time for this. Jaden scanned the balcony and found what he was looking for: a pair of basket-weave chairs. With a jerk of his hand, they flew towards the guards and bowled them over. A single wild blaster bolt ricocheted off the glass.

“Go!” he said, and followed Nieta back onto the speeder.

This time, he didn’t bother with finesse. He shoved off the building, and let it fall towards the ring road. They just had to land. The child screamed and jerked in Nieta’s arms when the airspeeder jolted against the ground, but they didn’t stick around long enough to find out if anyone had heard.

* * *

The High Command meeting was wrapping up. Officers shuffled datapads and caf cups and milled around chatting, while Snoke and Sloane held court at opposite ends of the table. It hadn’t always been like that: when Snoke had first come to the Fleet, no one had known what to make of him. Now, Brendol Hux stood beside his shoulder, surrounded by a cluster of the old guard from Empire days.

Thrawn glanced between the two leaders as he stood. Technically, Snoke should not be in Command meetings at all: he held no official rank within the First Order. But Sloane had given him command of one of their few Star Destroyers, and that cemented his role, just below the Supreme Leader, but not quite her underling.

It had not escaped Thrawn’s notice that Hux, himself a general, seemed to fall somewhere below Snoke in the pecking order. It was not a position Hux enjoyed, but he traded a loss in pride for the opportunity to back someone other than Sloane. 

Thrawn stopped by Sloane’s chair on his way out, bowing low. 

“Grand Admiral,” she said, holding up a hand to hush the commodore currently speaking. 

Rae Sloane did not look like a woman whose words and will had given life to an organization like the First Order. Stress had carved deep lines into her face, and her dark hair was streaked with grey. Look closer, and you could see the hardness in her eyes that hinted at the survivor instinct that had brought her here. 

“Your success at Heress V,” she said. “Your report indicated it may be a viable source for fuel going forward?”

Thrawn inclined his head. “Other avenues will need to be developed as well, of course, but if the force at Gethra fails, we will not be desperate.”

“Good work,” Sloane said. 

“My thanks.” With another bow, he turned to leave the room.

It was all display. Both he and she knew that his report had been thorough, but the visible exchange of support was necessary. For now, Thrawn served Sloane; without the trust she had placed in his abilities,Thrawn would have had much more difficulty establishing himself here. For all he planned to bring her First Order crashing down around her ears, he did good work to keep them in the air until the time came.

Until he understood the plans of the two figures quietly vying for power at the heart of the Fleet, he could not unravel them.

* * *

There were five names on their list.

Three children, one teenager, and a human baby, just a little over a year old. What the hell they were going to do with an infant, Jaden didn’t know. Nieta had charted the route, and Jaden didn’t know whether to be relieved that they would end up at the pickup point for the ysalamiri dead last. The longer the creatures were on board, the harder it would be to hide their effect.

The ship Nieta had found was a good choice for this kind of mission: fast and maneuverable, but with enough space to fit them all. The sleeping space for the children was a converted cargo hold with mats and blankets on the floor. Jaden and Nieta, thankfully, each had their own quarters.

It was still a kind of nightmare, sharing the ship with Nieta and the children she insisted on addressing only as “Initiate.” They had retrieved two of them so far, the boy from Ilda and a young Twi’lek girl. Nilo and Frith.

He tried to ignore them, but he found himself walking past the cargo hold once every hour or two. A containment field stretched across the entrance, keeping them inside. He would glance once, confirm that they were there and in one piece (and, if he was being honest with himself, that Nieta wasn’t there), and move on.

Late on the first day after they captured Frith, he found Nilo alone in the hold. Alarm shook him out of his careful detachment, and he leaned close to the crackle of the containment field. “Kid,” he said sharply. Nilo looked up, panic in his eyes. Jaden pointed down at the ground just inside the containment field. The boy hesitated, clearly calculating the consequences of refusing, then pulled himself off his mat and crept forward.

“Where’s the other one?” Jaden hissed, frantically trying to think when he had last seen Nieta.

Nilo’s mouth trembled. “I don’t know.”

Jaden leaned down, his face level with Nilo’s, trying to school his voice to absolute calm. “Did she leave or was she taken?”

“Ta—” Nilo started, clearly confused, then his eyes went wide as he realized what Jaden was asking.

“Left, then.” Jaden straightened, thinking, then nearly groaned when he thought of it. There were so many nooks and crannies in a ship a small person could get into with enough determination and ingenuity. He had relied on it when he was younger.

He never thought he would be on the other end of it.

“How long ago?” Jaden asked. When Nilo hesitated again, Jaden stared him down.

It didn’t take long. “Uh, uh, twenty minutes?” Nilo blurted.

Jaden turned away without a word, feeling the familiar pressure, the Force warping around him as his emotions churned. He stalked the corridors, listening for telltale sounds: no matter how quiet you were trying to be, moving through the vents of a ship was never a silent journey. Finally, just outside the engine room, he heard a faint thump. Smart kid, if she knew what she was doing: the secondary escape pod was back here.

Silence followed the rattle, and Jaden waited, perfectly still. There. Another one, more muffled than the last. Jaden scanned the ceiling. Just outside the door to the engine room, there was a grate. He positioned himself beneath it as the scuffling sounds continued. Just when she was about to reach it, he ripped the grate away with the Force and leapt upwards.

He couldn’t fit into the space, but his arm certainly could. He grabbed a handful of cloth and dragged the struggling girl out with him. She fought like a wild Loth-cat, twisting and clawing at him. It was all he could do to hold onto her without hurting her. She took a ragged breath and opened her mouth, and Jaden clapped a hand over it. “Be quiet,” he said harshly. “The captain doesn’t know you’re out yet.”

Frith went still for a moment, every muscle tense in Jaden’s grip.

“If the captain finds out,” Jaden said slowly, “she is going to teach you a lesson about trying to escape, and it will hurt. Understand? Nod if you understand.”

He could feel the girl’s reluctance in her tense hesitation, but finally, she nodded. Jaden took his hand away from her mouth, but didn’t release her, just turned his steps towards the cargo hold. When she realized what direction they were headed, she whispered, “Wait, wait! No, don’t take me back there!”

“I have to,” Jaden said. “We’re in hyperspace, where do you think you’re going to go?”

He ignored Frith’s tears as he sealed the containment field again, and quietly set up two more inside the vent system, one just inside each of the closest vents to the cargo hold. But he didn’t tell Nieta. They were safe for now; let them wait to learn their first harsh lesson.

* * *

“Welcome back, Eesix,” Thrawn said. The droid stopped in the middle of the command room, stymied by the pleasantry. “Were you successful?”

“It depends upon the parameters of ‘success,’” Eesix said. “The hunters were able to retrieve Forex’s ships logs, and I completed my preliminary analysis on the journey back.”

Thrawn steepled his fingers, all of his attention on Eesix. “And what did you find?”

“I do not think it will be feasible to retrieve their course. They appear to have used an external navicomputer, or perhaps a pre-charted course on a dataspike. No trace remains on the ship’s computer.”

_External charts. There must be a way to find the source._

Eesix’s voice yanked Thrawn away from making plans. “Their origin point was not what I expected.”

“Oh?”

“They did not leave from Sloane’s ship. They left from Snoke’s ship _Revenant_ , with no communication to _Rectifier_.”

Thrawn raised his eyebrows. “Indeed? One data point is hardly enough to prove it, but I would conjecture that whatever these ships are doing, Snoke is hiding it from Sloane. Continue your analysis. Perhaps _Forex_ has some other hints to give us.”

* * *

The baby wailed against Jaden’s shoulder. He held onto him tighter as he ran. “Shh, Greela, shh.”

His mind kept returning to the crumpled forms of Greela’s parents, lit in momentary clarity by a flash of lightning. They had left the broken door swinging open behind them. The storm poured down on them now, rain soaking down the back of Jaden’s collar. No matter what he did, he couldn’t keep Greela dry. He thought that was why he was crying. That and the stranger carrying him. He was too young to understand the rest.

The roar of a speeder engine rounded the corner, and two figures leapt from it into their path. Nieta’s lightsaber was still lit, but Jaden reached out and shoved, scattering whatever kin these were like leaves in a gale.

The whole town seemed to be on alert, windows lighting up and fear a rising hum behind the locked doors. A wall enclosed the town, and a gate that had been open when they arrived was shut tight. Two guards stood against the gate.

“Do you want to take a chance on missing?” Nieta said, gesturing to Jaden’s burden. Rain sizzled and spat against her blade; red haloed her.

The guards in front of them shifted uneasily. The blasters they held were crude, and they did not have the look of hardened soldiers. Nieta shifted, and they missed their chance at a shot. In a matter of seconds, the guards lay dead.

It cleared a path to their ship. Jaden kept his mind on that, on getting on board and helping to warm the ship up and getting her free of the planet’s atmosphere. 

Just when he was sure the nightmare was finally over, the other ship nosed out from behind an asteroid and started shooting.

* * *

“What were you able to glean?” Thrawn asked.

“The logs are fragmented once the _Forex_ leaves the Fleet network for the second time. Data has been erased, and I was not able to retrieve all of it.” Eesix trundled forward, plugging into the holoprojector. “The sensor readings came back cleanest, and they turned up something suggestive. Thirteen days into its journey, the ship recorded a massive energy burst followed by gravitational anomalies.”

“Indicating?” Thrawn peered at the numbers and graphs Eesix had thrown up on the projector, one hand on his chin.

“I have not seen anything like it before,” Eesix said. “While I can isolate a signature consistent with the hypermatter used in a typical jump, the _Forex_ came into contact with levels in excess of twenty times what a single ship could produce. And these readings…” Eesix highlighted one of the datasets.

“These I do not have a frame of reference for.” Eesix sounded almost frustrated. “Whatever affected the gravity in the ship’s vicinity, it produced effects almost like a black hole, but it appeared from nowhere seconds after the large hypermatter reaction. Seven minutes and fifty-three seconds later, gravity readings stabilized to the same levels as before the reaction.”

“There are many strange things to be found in uncharted space,” Thrawn said. “It is possible they simply ran afoul of one of those. But such an encounter would be logged by the captain, no?” He reached out, flicking through the reports on the projector. “No. I think Snoke has found, or is making, something in secret. So, the question remains: weapon, or transport?”

“Perhaps both,” Eesix put in. “The Death Star used hypermatter reactions for both.”

Thrawn frowned. He knew the Fleet’s capabilities, and they should not have access to anything on that scale. “Let us hope it does not come to that.”

* * *

It was like the ship had been waiting for them. The pilot flew like a demon; Nieta cursed as they harried them, denying them an opening to jump to hyperspace. “Get on the turret!” she told Jaden.

Jaden left Greela with the other children and ran, conflicting emotions hammering at him. The longer this went on, the more he struggled to remember that he had a purpose here and it wasn’t to make a target of himself by hindering the mission. He missed the other ship over and over again, and even he couldn’t say if it was the pilot’s skill or his own reluctance or distraction that sent his shots astray.

He saw the laser coming and scrambled out of his seat and down the access hatch just in time. The ship jolted and rocked, and smoke poured in from the gun turret, joined a moment later by blue clouds of flame retardant as emergency systems engaged.

“Shields holding?” he yelled into his commlink.

“Shields holding, the hell are you doing, Mar?”

“Who let him get an opening?” Jaden snapped back.

At least that meant the whole ship wasn’t going to crack open like an egg from the damage to the gun turret. And taking out the gun, that suggested the pilot wanted to disable them, not destroy them. His stomach leapt at the thought. It was a rescue mission, all right, and Jaden needed to sort out his priorities fast.

Acting on impulse, he backtracked, swerving off his course to the cockpit and running along the corridor towards the cargo hold, then past it. He held out a hand and a grate came crashing down to the floor. A running leap, and he managed to haul himself half into the vent, one shoulder hanging out, that hand scrabbling for purchase on the corridor’s ceiling.

Two pairs of terrified eyes looked at him through the red shimmer of the containment field. Jaden reached forward, straining, and hit the disengage on the containment field. “Keep quiet and get to the spot where I found you last time if you want to get out of here,” he growled at Frith, meeting her eyes directly. She looked away, unable to hold eye contact with him, then nodded. Nilo, behind her, had his arm wrapped protectively over the baby.

The ship rocked again, and Jaden’s commlink broke the silence. “Mar, get to the engine room, I think he hit something back there.”

Keeping his eyes on Frith, Jaden shifted his arm enough to answer. “I’ll get over there now.” His silence was the best promise he could give the kids; he dropped to the floor and hoped the pilot really had blown something important.

The ship did feel different under him, wobbly and slow, and when Jaden got to the engine room, he heard why: one of the engines was guttering and moaning. Luckily, he wasn’t here to fix it.

The main boarding ramp and primary escape pod were close to the cockpit. But if a ship wanted to dock with this one, it needed the airlock next to the secondary escape pod located in the engine room. “Something’s definitely wrong with Engine One,” he said into his commlink with exaggerated alarm.

Best solution was probably to shut Engine One down. Usually they were linked, doubling the ship’s sublight power and allowing one to serve as backup for the other if it failed. Instead, Jaden went to the controls and opened the link between the engines fully, listening as Engine One flared, nearly failed, flared again…

As power poured in from Engine Two to Engine One, it overloaded the damaged engine. Instead of quietly dying, it exploded, the concussion barely contained by the hull plating between Jaden and the reactor. Jaden clung tight, holding his breath and straining his aching ears for the sound of Engine Two.

With an undramatic warble, Engine Two shut down.

Jaden bit back his triumphant laugh as his commlink blared to life again. “I need those engines!” Nieta snarled.

“Got here too late,” Jaden said. “Feedback from One got to Two. I’m gonna try and get Two back online. Do your best with the maneuvering jets.”

Nieta’s best wasn’t enough. Not with a mechanic who was working against her. Within minutes, there was the distinctive thunk and hiss as another ship docked with theirs.

Jaden was standing with his hands up when the airlock opened. For a moment, all he saw was a wash of green light. A man stepped through, and Jaden stumbled back a step as every second of his time with the First Order hit him at once.

A lightsaber. The man carried a lightsaber, its green blade casting an almost eerie light on his blond hair and clear blue eyes. Not the weapon of a Sith, but of a…

“Jedi,” Jaden said, his voice cracking.

There was something familiar there, something ringing in the Force. He heard his own voice, so many years ago, murmuring, “ _Twin suns_.” As mysteriously as it had come, the feeling went again, leaving Jaden only with a painful seed of hope.

The man’s eyes snapped to his, his lightsaber rising fractionally into a guard stance. Jaden held up his empty hands. “I don’t wanna stop you,” he said, stumbling over his words. “There’s some kids, that’s why you’re here, right? They’re in the vent outside this door. Just tell ‘em—tell ‘em you’re here to rescue them.”

The lightsaber deactivated, and the man came over to Jaden with hurried steps, his eyes searching Jaden’s face worriedly. “Do you need to get out, too?” he asked. “Who are you?”

Jaden wanted to laugh. No, he was not the one here who needed rescuing. “Who I am isn’t important,” he said. “Just get the kids. Do you have a blaster?” He gave the Jedi a once-over, then shook his head and pulled his own off his belt. “Take mine. I need you to shoot me, make it look good.”

The other man looked at the blaster for a long, long moment. Jaden shook it meaningfully, and the Jedi finally wrapped his fingers around the grip. “This doesn’t have a stun setting.”

“Then be careful where you hit me,” Jaden said dryly. “Come on.” He stepped away slowly, looking over his shoulder to make sure the man was following. He seemed confused, but willing. That was good enough for Jaden. He stopped a few feet down the corridor, darting a silent glance up at the grate overhead. When he was sure the other man had clocked it, he set himself into a fighting stance and charged him.

For an instant, he was sure the Jedi wasn’t going to shoot him. Then, the soft blue eyes hardened into a more determined expression, and pain flared along the outside of Jaden’s shoulder. He crashed to his knees, unable to stop the pained gasp, and behind the Jedi, a grate fell to the floor.

“Go,” he said to the Jedi, as Frith’s head poked out. “I’ll be fine.”

“My name is Luke Skywalker,” the Jedi said. “If you need out, find the New Republic and tell them I sent you.”

Jaden laughed, then winced and pressed a hand to the blaster burn. “I don’t think it’d be that easy,” he said. “But thanks for the thought. Get out of here, before someone else comes.”

On cue, they heard running footsteps, and the hum of a lightsaber. Jaden scrambled to his feet and raised his hand, pushing Luke back towards the engine room with a hard shove in the Force. Luke’s eyes went wide and startled, but a moment later, he got his feet under him and rallied. A second blaster bolt sparked off metal just beside Jaden’s hurt shoulder.

“Run!” Luke yelled to the children, and Jaden got just enough in Nieta’s way to slow her for a second. That second was enough. He heard her scream of rage as the ship took off, the crash and sizzle as she hit something with her lightsaber, and then she stepped into the corridor. Jaden went on his toes, grasping at his throat as an invisible hand squeezed down tight on his windpipe.


	3. Chapter Three

“ _Two_ Sith?” Sabine asked, plonking a steaming mug in front of him. “You’re sure?”

She settled back in the chair across from Luke’s desk with her own mug cradled against her chest, looking like she planned to stay a while. Luke sighed and pushed his hair out of his eyes. He reached out, hooking the mug closer, and felt a lot better about the interruption when the smell of chocolate hit his nostrils. “That’s a dirty trick,” he commented, but he raised the mug to his face and inhaled again.

“Skywalker,” Sabine said, somewhere between impatient and amused. “Sith. Two?”

“I’m not really sure about them both being Sith,” Luke said. “But they’re definitely both Force-wielders.”

Sabine’s eyes sharpened. “And?”

“And what?” Luke said, throwing her a playful glare.

“Don’t give me that. You’re keeping something back. What’s weird about the one you’re not sure about?”

Luke leaned forward, almost relieved. He had been wanting to talk this over ever since he’d got back, but Leia and Han were both far away and he didn’t know who else to trust with this. “He helped me,” he said.

Sabine raised an eyebrow, and Luke found himself spilling out the whole story. Sabine sat up straighter as the story went on. “He give you a name?” she asked.

“No.” Luke frowned, then realization hit him. “Sabine,” he said. “This was… I don’t know if he was with her, but he wasn’t a Jedi. The Force was all tangled and dark around him.”

Sabine’s lips tightened, and Luke looked at her with concern. He hadn’t really met her until after the war was over, even though she had been in the Rebellion much longer than he had. Almost as soon as he set up his little Jedi enclave, she and Ahsoka had turned up for a visit. Later, he found out they were hoping that news of the Temple would draw a lost friend of theirs in. At the time, it had just seemed like Ahsoka wanted to poke around and give advice.

Since then, he had invited them to treat the Temple as a base for their search. While they weren’t having any luck on their search for Ezra, they did turn up Force-sensitives now and again who were happy to join the Temple. At least five people had come to him for some sort of training after meeting Ahsoka and Sabine. They had brought the kidnappings to him, too: the children he had rescued had them to thank, in the end.

And Sabine had become a friend over the years. He could tell the search took a toll on her. He wanted to help. “You’ve never told me much about Ezra,” Luke said, choosing his words carefully. “If you tell me more, maybe I can…”

Sabine looked down, then pulled a folded-up sheet of flimsi out of a pouch on her belt. She unfolded it carefully. “We tried not to take holopics,” she said. “We were pretty wanted. Most of the pics out there of Ezra are from when he was younger. Look-Out-For-These-Dangerous-Rebels pictures for the HoloNet, that kind of thing. And I mostly did caricatures.” She slid the paper across the table to Luke. Startled, he realized it was a drawing, a little stylized, a little unreal, but familiar.

“I did this not long after…” Sabine was saying, but Luke was barely listening. The hair was starkly different, short and tidy, but the face shape… He traced his fingers over two slashing lines across the cheekbone.

“Are these scars?” he asked sharply. “From lightsaber burns?”

Sabine cut off, staring at him. “Yeah,” she breathed.

“That’s him,” Luke said. “That’s the man who helped me.”

“Luke.” Sabine grabbed his hands, her eyes lighting up. She laughed and pulled him up into an impulsive hug. “You found him!”

“Wait,” Luke said, pushing her away. She stared at him over the desk, frowning. “Sabine… He’s fallen to the dark side. He might not want to come back.”

“No,” she said. “I know Ezra. He struggled when we were kids, but he wouldn’t just go evil. We spent too long fighting. He’s just…lost. Luke, we need to bring him home.”

Her eyes were pleading, and Luke remembered his own father, twisted and lost but not irretrievably gone from the Light. “Okay,” he said. “I’m coming with you.”

* * *

The starfield blurred in Jaden’s vision. He blinked.

The last thing he remembered was Nieta reaching into his mind: the sharp-edged tendrils of her thoughts, feeling sick and strange against his own. He had fought the mental grip with every scrap of will. Panic clutched at his throat. Had he kept her out? What had she seen?

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to feel for tears in his mental shields. They were a mess, but he breathed easier as he realized it was the usual mess. Even if Nieta had slid past some of them, he thought she hadn’t reached the deepest layers.

As if it had been patiently waiting for his panic to subside, a realization came to him. He opened his eyes again and lifted his head slowly.

This wasn’t the ship.

“No, no, no, no!” Jaden scrambled to his feet, pressing his hands to the porthole. Outside, there were only stars and, far in the distance, the planet from which they had stolen Greela. He stumbled back, and his back hit the wall. He was in the escape pod, and Nieta had left without him.

Jaden’s knees shook, and he slid to the ground. He buried his hands in his hair, unable to hear anything but the harsh sound of his breaths. “Stop it,” he told himself. “Stop this. This isn’t…” Images pried at his mind: the cold, airless nothing of space where the purrgils had left them. Prying a helmet off a Stormtrooper who didn’t need it anymore just to keep breathing.

No. He knew where he was. There was a populated planet not far off. He sucked in a deep breath, then crouched over the instrument panel. Plenty of air, and there it was: the distress beacon. He flicked it on, then closed his eyes to listen to the low, echoing beeps. He counted, resting his forehead against the panel as his breathing slowed.

He wouldn’t be alone again.

He didn’t truly believe it until he woke again to the sound of metal against the pod’s hull, and then a faint hiss of air. Jaden raised his head, blinking away sleep, and was sure the vision standing in the brighter light beyond the airlock was a dream. He rose slowly to his feet, stepping out of the escape pod and into the hold of the other ship.

“Sabine?”

The word came out of his mouth quiet, unsure, even though he would recognize the woman standing across from him anywhere. Everything else faded away.

Her armor was still a chaotic assembly of colors and symbols. On one shoulder, she wore a skull-like symbol with extravagant tusks. He took in a sharp breath as he realized that on the other shoulder, her left, she had painted a purrgil. She pulled off her helmet, and he saw wide brown eyes and a short crop of blue-and-scarlet hair. 

He couldn’t look at her expression. She looked hopeful and amazed and near tears all at once.

“You changed your hair,” he said weakly.

She made a choked-off sound and lunged across the distance between them, wrapping her arms tightly around him. Jaden lost all his breath. The hug was a relief so painful that he was afraid he would crumble to pieces right there. “You idiot,” she said, her own voice choked with tears. “How did you end up in that pod?”

Jaden frowned, and he remembered what he looked like now. What he’d become. He pushed her away, keeping his hands firmly on her shoulders to stop her closing the distance again. “You should put me down at the next port,” he said.

Her eyebrows snapped together. Jaden knew that look. “Oh, no. You don’t get rid of me that easy, Ezra.”

Jaden flinched. He couldn’t help it.

Five years. Five years since anyone had called him Ezra. Longer since anyone had looked at him with that kind of concern—with that kind of _love_.

“That’s not my name anymore,” he said, his teeth clenched.

Sabine visibly stopped herself snapping back. “O-kay. So what do I call you?”

Suddenly, Jaden didn’t want to tell her. There wasn’t anything wrong with the alias he had chosen, but it was the name of the person he had become, not the person Sabine knew. He hadn’t realized he was still holding on so tightly to that other self. He craved the sound of his name, the warmth in her voice when she said it. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t…” He started to pull away.

Sabine grabbed his wrist, and he threw her halfway across the hold before he caught up to himself. He stared at her, panting. She just picked herself up, her eyes on his the entire time.

After a long moment when he failed to follow up on the attack, Sabine started towards him with fierce purpose in every step. She stopped with her face only inches from his, tilted slightly back to meet his eyes. Unflinching. “Listen to me,” she said in a low voice. “I have been searching for you for years, and if you think I’m going to let you slip through my fingers now that I’ve actually found you, you don’t know me at all.”

“Years?”

Sabine’s eyes softened, and she reached up to catch his face between both of her hands. “Years. As soon as we were sure Lothal could manage without us, Ahsoka and I started looking. When I finally heard someone had seen you…” Her voice cracked, and he saw, suddenly, the toll the years had taken on her, too.

“But why? You had a whole galaxy of possibilities that weren’t this. What about the others? What about Mandalore?”

Her expression tightened for reasons he couldn’t parse just now, but she pressed on. “My family was safe. _Both_ of my families were safe. Everyone except you.” Sabine bit her lip, and looked away from him at last. “I don’t know what happened to you. Your eyes…”

“I’m not a Jedi anymore,” Jaden said, making every word clear, setting them up like fence posts between them. “I serve a Sith master, and I’ve trained in the dark side of the Force. I’ve killed people. I can’t…” Sabine looked up at him again, and he forced himself to go on. “I can’t come back, Sabine.”

Her face clouded, and he knew he had finally gotten through to her. He wrapped his hands around her wrists and gently pried her hands away from his face. “I need you to take me to a spaceport,” he said.

“Why?”

“I already told—”

Sabine cut him off. “Not why should I leave you. Why did you do any of that? Because I’m not exactly seeing a merciless murderer here. I saw what you could do when you used the dark side, remember? You could make me turn around and put in whatever hyperspace coordinates you wanted to. You could do much worse. So I want to know why, exactly, you decided turning to the dark side was your best move.”

Jaden closed his eyes. “I can’t tell you. Not yet. There are plans in motion, and I can’t risk anyone interfering.”

“So bring me in on the plan,” she said, like it was obvious. When he just frowned at her, she said, “You can bring me in on the plan, or I can try to help anyway and make a mess. Those are your choices. And don’t act like you wouldn’t do the same thing.”

Jaden blinked, then looked around the ship for the first time, a new worry surfacing. “Who’s piloting?” he asked. Please, not Hera. He couldn’t face her, too.

“Luke,” Sabine said, and his relief was so strong it took him a moment to recognize the name.

“ _Skywalker_?” he asked.

“How else do you think I got a location on you? After he told me he’d run into you, I had to come and see.” She finally pulled away, starting towards the door. “Come on. I think you should say hello.”

Jaden followed, reluctant but knowing if he didn’t face this now, he would still have to at some point. Sabine paused in the entrance to the cockpit.

“Hey, Luke. You’ll never believe who was in the escape pod.”

Jaden, looking over Sabine’s shoulder, could only see a shock of blond hair as Luke’s head turned. “I think I will,” he said, a laugh in his voice. A second later, he shoved up from the pilot’s chair and smiled at Jaden, a little uncertainly. “Hello again.” After another moment, he held out a hand.

Jaden’s looked between Luke’s hand and his face, feeling off-kilter. “Hi,” he said, squaring his shoulders and stepping forward. He shook Luke’s hand briefly, then pulled away. “I’m Jaden.” He could feel Sabine’s eyes on him, so he made himself add, “Jaden Mar.”

Luke looked gently surprised, but he nodded. “Jaden.”

“I…” Jaden made a snap decision. He needed a ship, anyway. “I was going to brief Sabine on a mission. Am I briefing you, too?”

Luke frowned, looking over Jaden’s shoulder. “Why don’t we all go sit somewhere and talk?” he said.

They ended up in a galley, Luke and Jaden across the table from each other, with Sabine sitting between them. Luke folded his hands, wearing a grave expression that made him look several years older.

“There’s a Sith lord,” Jaden started. “My master.”

Luke opened his mouth to speak, but Sabine jumped in, her voice sharp. “Don’t call him your master,” she said. “Whoever he is, he is _not_ your master.”

Jaden met her eyes, the ghost of Kanan looming large between them. “Right now,” he said, “he is.”

“Who are we talking about? What master?” Luke asked.

Quickly, Jaden turned back to Luke, considering. “If I tell you, you have to promise not to just go after him. He’s too strong.”

“Jaden,” Sabine said. Her voice barely stumbled over the name. “Luke took down Vader and the Emperor.”

Jaden stared. One Jedi, against _them_? He and Kanan had been no match for Vader. Just resisting the Emperor’s will had taken everything Jaden had. Luke shifted under his gaze, a bitter twist to his mouth. That sparked Jaden’s curiosity, as much as what he’d done. Wouldn’t anyone be proud?

“We need to know what you know, if there’s someone dangerous out there,” Luke said.

“His name is Snoke,” Jaden said. “He leads the Knights of Ren. There’s only two of us right now, which is why he’s looking for new blood.”

“And what are his plans?” Luke asked.

Jaden blinked. “Are you with the Rebellion?” he asked.

“I was,” Luke said. “There’s a New Republic now, but I’m not part of the military anymore.”

Huh. Jaden had always assumed that among Thrawn’s contacts would be whatever was left of the Rebellion. If they didn’t know at all, then maybe there was a reason. Even a few years ago, he might not have trusted Thrawn so completely in this. But his plans ran so deep, Jaden didn’t know which threads he could pull without unraveling the whole thing.

He squared his shoulders. “I don’t know his endgame, but it’s nothing good for the rest of the galaxy, trust me. I just need to make a pickup and get back in there and I’ll actually have a chance to get rid of Snoke for good.”

“Let me get this straight,” Sabine said. “You stayed out of contact, joined up with the Sith, and started using the dark side for a _chance_ at killing the one in charge?”

“Yes!” Jaden threw up his hands. “I know it sounds dumb when you say it like that, but you haven’t been there. You haven’t felt his presence. He’s as bad as Vader, almost as bad as the Emperor was. I wasn’t ever going to get close enough to do this without making it seem real.”

“How did you even find out about him?” Sabine asked, her voice rising.

“I had visions,” Jaden said. His voice cracked. “Months and months of visions. Kanan asking me what I was doing hiding out on some empty planet. Images of what Snoke was trying to build. The Force was screaming in my ear about it, I had to listen eventually.”

“Didn’t it ever occur to you that there are better ways to fight this? That maybe your friends would want to fight with you?” Sabine stood abruptly and pushed away from the table. Just before she left the galley, Jaden saw her swipe an arm across her face. He and Luke turned back to each other in the heavy silence that followed.

“Sabine trusts you,” Luke said quietly, “but I need to be sure of a few things.”

Jaden took a deep breath. “What do you want to know?”

“The children,” Luke said. “What were you doing with the children?”

“They’re…” Jaden tried to think of how to phrase this. “My current official mission is a…recruitment mission for the Knights of Ren.”

“‘Recruitment mission,’” Luke repeated, his flat voice showing his distaste for the phrasing.

Jaden shrugged. “The Empire had two ways of recruiting new Sith. They either turned Jedi, or kidnapped younglings. Snoke’s left with the same options. He has…become convinced that the second one might bring up numbers more efficiently.”

“I have to ask.” Luke’s hands tensed on the table, and it looked like this question was more difficult for him to ask than the last. “About the dark side…”

Jaden sighed and put his head in his hands. “I know. I _know_. I tried to fight it, but it…I’ve had to make a lot of bad choices. I used to be able to find my way back, when I wasn’t with them.”

Luke’s expression suddenly sharpened. “Your way back?”

“I don’t know if you ever tried using the dark side,” Jaden said. “I…got into trouble with it, when I was younger. For a while, when you’re using it, it still hasn’t taken you over all the way. I found out that even once it has taken over, it’s possible to bring yourself back, if you can remember what it was like to be part of the light.” Unconsciously, he crossed his arms over his chest. “It hurts, when you do.”

He looked up, and realized Luke was staring at him, a look in his eyes that was part fascination, and part wistfulness. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he said. “Can you do it now that you’re safe?”

Jaden looked away. “No.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, and the tension in the room ratcheted up several degrees. “You can’t, or you won’t?” Luke asked.

“I can’t,” Jaden said firmly. 

The tension held for another moment, then Luke seemed to accept that answer. “How long were you on that escape pod? Did you ever get your blaster burn seen to?” That seemed like a lifetime ago, and Jaden had been ignoring the pain of it in favor of other, more important things. Luke took his silence as an answer. “I’ll get the medkit, then show you to crew quarters.”

“Not gonna confine me?” Jaden asked, making his tone light.

Luke darted a glance at Jaden, then followed his lead and smiled. “No. You’ll have to share with me, I’m afraid.”

Eventually, feeling much better for a bacta patch and a lot of water, Jaden went to find Sabine. “Still a good place to think?” he said, crouched at the top of the ladder down to the gun turret. Sabine looked up at him, then gave a little shrug.

“If it works, it works,” she said. He offered her a hand as she climbed up the ladder, and she surprised him by taking it.

“I wanted to thank you,” Jaden said.

Sabine frowned. “What for?” she said warily.

“Keeping Lothal safe.” He met her eyes. “I checked, when I finally got back to the Outer Rim. It stayed free.”

“Yeah.” Sabine looked down. “Managed to keep one planet safe, all right. You know, Hera still lives there?”

“No kidding.”

“Actually…” Sabine hesitated. “I wanted to show you something.” She pulled out a handheld holoprojector. Jaden didn’t understand what he was seeing for a second. Sure, he could tell that it was a child, ten or eleven, with a mischievous grin and pointed ears, but he didn’t understand why Sabine was showing it to him. Then…something whispered to him, and he looked closer.

“No way,” he said. He still didn’t believe it until Sabine nodded.

“Looks like both of ‘em, doesn’t he?” she said.

Kanan and Hera had a son. The knowledge cracked Jaden open like nothing else had, letting in a howling gale of old grief. Jaden reached out, catching himself on Sabine’s shoulder. But, as with a storm that brought rain to a drought-stricken land, love and wonder and hope followed.

_Hope._

With his next breath, his lungs seemed to pull in more air than before. The universe expanded from his dark, cramped bubble until he felt as if he stood on a trail of stars, the whole brilliant galaxy swirling around him.

He could picture them all, the lives his crew was leading because he had saved them all those years ago. Hera, on Lothal, with this boy who looked like he had never known grief. Chopper, too; Jaden knew he would never go far from Hera. Where was Zeb? Jaden didn’t know yet, but he would bet he was still getting into the best kind of trouble.

It was like he had forgotten they were still out there.

“Jaden?” Sabine was saying, and her voice sounded a little alarmed. Jaden jerked back into the present. His throat was tight, but he smiled at Sabine.

“Thanks for showing me that,” he managed. “I…” His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard. “Would you tell me about them?”

They ended up sitting on Sabine’s floor, huddled over a datapad as she showed him pictures and told him stories. Jaden hugged his knees to his chest and asked questions and hung on every word. By the end of it, he was wrung-out, cried-out, and not at all certain he knew which way was up anymore.

* * *

“He’s definitely in there,” Sabine said.

Luke paused in his caf-making and gave her his full attention. Sabine just picked at a fleck on the table surface. She was exhausted; she had sent Jaden off to sleep, but remained too restless to go to sleep herself. “He is,” Luke finally said, when she didn’t go on. Her head snapped up at that.

“You actually agree with me,” she said.

“We had a chance to talk,” Luke said. “I noticed you didn’t put us on a course back home.”

“He really thinks this mission of his is our best chance,” Sabine said. “If taking him to his meeting gets us closer to stopping the Red Blades coming back, then I’m all for it.” She glanced up at Luke. “Although if you’re not signed on for it…”

Luke rubbed a hand through his hair. “No,” he said. “If there really is some kind of new Sith order out there, then we need to look into it.”

Sabine let the silence in the galley go on until Luke settled across from her, blowing on his caf to cool it. He looked at her and raised his eyebrows, and she sighed.

“How much do you think he knows about what happened in the war?” she asked. “He was gone before the Death Star turned up. He didn’t even know who you were, and everybody knows that now!” She glanced up at Luke. “I didn’t tell him about any of the bad stuff that happened. Not about Alderaan, or about…about Mandalore.”

“There will be time for that later,” Luke said, in what she thought of as his Jedi Master voice. She knew he meant it to be soothing, but it rankled.

“And what if later never comes? What I want to do is take him back to Lothal and make him stay there.” Sabine gestured impatiently, knowing it was an irrational thing to want. “I trust him, but I don’t like this. I’ve spent years trying to figure out how we could’ve freed Lothal without losing him or Kanan. I _know_ they were both doing the right thing, but there has to be another way this time.”

“Maybe there is,” Luke said. “There’s people ready to help, this time.”

* * *

Luke was snoring in the bunk below.

While it happened from time to time, Jaden wasn’t used to sharing quarters anymore, and his restless thoughts didn’t help. He tried to stay still and think sleepy thoughts, but after a time, he turned over with a creak that made him wince. The first night he had been too tired to be aware of this. Tonight, he couldn’t sleep.

There was a pulse in the Force, and he felt Luke’s muzzy awareness before Luke mumbled, “You’re awake?” 

Jaden turned over and sighed, his eyes on the scuffed paneling on the other side of the room. “Yeah, I’m awake.”

There was a squeak of protest from the bunk below him, and Jaden pictured Luke lying on his back, his eyes on the bottom of Jaden’s bunk. Jaden waited for him to fall asleep again, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “I knew someone who came back from the dark side.”

Jaden blinked. “Yeah?” he said. “Bet there’s a story behind that.”

Silence for a moment. Then, “It was my father. He died, after. I don’t know if he could have done it without sacrificing himself, but I always wondered.”

“I don’t know a lot about it,” Jaden admitted. “It’s all...trial and error. I didn’t plan on falling.”

“But you want to come back?”

There was something about the dark of crew quarters that encouraged confession. Or maybe it was the banked fire of Luke’s Force signature below, so warm when he had been cold for so long. Jaden told him the truth. “Yeah.” He closed his eyes, feeling bruised somewhere deeper than bones. “I dunno if I’ll get the chance, but yeah.”

“What’s stopping you?” Luke’s voice held only curiosity, no judgement. Jaden rolled his head against his pillow, trying to marshal his words.

“I don’t have enough left to fight it,” he said. “The dark side throws everything back at you, trying to remind you why you belong down there in the shadows, trying to convince you that you’re more powerful if you stay there. I know it’s a lie. I know it’s just trying to hold onto me. But the last time I tried, it…” 

He paused, breathing to a silent count of five as he felt the Force twist around him, pouring dark promises into his limbs. For an instant, he felt strong enough not to care about the pain. Death, the whisper inside him insisted, was nothing to one steeped in shadow. Why was he denying himself this strength? But he knew it wasn’t enough to carry him through this whole. He was not whole as it was, but he still clung to what was left of himself. 

“I thought it was going to tear me apart,” he said at last.

There was a sensation like something questing at the edge of his mind. This wasn’t an invasion, as when Snoke reached out to him, but polite inquiry. It distracted Jaden. He had been holding everything tight to himself, the dark tangle as well as his own thoughts, just trying to breathe through the conflict. He loosened his hold, letting Luke investigate the edges of his mind.

“Let me help you try,” Luke said. “I can feel you fighting it.”

He wanted to say yes.

“Not now,” he said. “After all of this is over.”

Jaden would probably be dead, but it was nice to pretend this was a promise he could keep. 

“All right. But can I try something for tonight?” Luke’s voice was almost shy. Silently, Jaden relaxed his grip even further. Much of what he had learned about shielding his mind was trial and error, study on his own, and sheer desperate necessity. He knew his mind was a mess, but he knew how to let someone in just a little. It felt like reaching out a hand to Luke.

It felt like Luke taking his hand and stepping in close.

And then Luke’s mind wrapped around his like a blanket. Instead of smothering him, it held him down to this ship, where he wanted to be. “Where did you learn this?” he whispered. Like and unlike the mental grip that Nieta used to send pain through an opponent’s nerves, it spread through his body, encouraging him to relax one muscle at a time. It was a little frightening, if Jaden was honest, and he had to fight not to break the grip.

“My sister had trouble figuring out meditation at first,” Luke said. “We, uh, figured this out instead by accident when I was teaching her. It’s good for nightmares, though.”

“I’ll bet,” Jaden said. Sleep was calling. He let it.

* * *

“Something’s wrong,” Luke said.

Jaden felt it, too, like a bruise in the otherwise warm and living light of the Force on this planet, a black spot that pulsed behind his eyes. Dark had triumphed here, and a Jedi was dying.

Luke abandoned caution, following the sense down to a village. Jaden clamped down on his unease, shoving it deep behind mental shields. It looked as if Nieta had beat them here.

They landed in a plaza at the center of the village. Luke exuded such gentle, calm authority that the wary-eyed villagers agreed to take him to their Jedi as soon as he asked. Jaden tried to slip away, but Sabine’s hand clamped down on his arm, keeping him with her. They were led through someone’s house to a clean, sunlit room. She was laid out on a bed there, a sheet drawn up over her middle. Jaden could feel the pain radiating out in the Force. 

“Inara,” Luke gasped, falling into a chair beside the bed. He took her hand carefully, his eyes on her face.

“Master Luke,” she whispered. 

Jaden knew that the young Force-wielders in her care were ten and fifteen years old. He had expected someone older. But under the lines of strain on her face, she couldn’t be any older than twenty-two or twenty-three. As he watched, grim determination came into her face. Her hand tightened on Luke’s. “My apprentices,” she said. “You must find them, please, Master. A woman with a lightsaber took them. A _red_ lightsaber.” Her eyes held all the fear that image held for Jedi who had lived under the Empire.

Beside Jaden, Sabine’s jaw worked. She glanced at Jaden, then dragged him into the hallway.

“How many?” she said. When he hesitated, she said, “How many kids on your list? Because I count at least two still in the hands of a Sith.”

“Do you think I enjoyed it?” Jaden snapped. “There were more important things.”

“More important than saving innocents?” Her voice was flat.

“If my plan works, I can get them free. If it doesn’t, then they’re doomed anyway.”

Sabine’s lips tightened. “They didn’t get to make that choice,” she said softly, her eyes cutting to the heart of him and finding him wanting. Jaden wanted to flinch from that gaze, but he held it. “Neither did Inara. Is she going to survive this?”

Jaden reached out with his feelings and found the wound in her gut, the organs that were already beginning to fail. It confirmed what he already knew. “No,” he said.

Sabine closed her eyes for a moment. “How many kids, Jaden?”

“Just Inara’s two apprentices,” Jaden said. “They’re the last on the list, I swear.”

Luke came to the doorway, leaning there with sorrow in his eyes and resolve in the set of his jaw. “This just turned into another rescue mission,” he said. “Can you get whatever you came for fast? I’m going to start calling for reinforcements.”

Jaden met Sabine’s eyes, silently begging her to trust him. This could still be salvaged. She nodded minutely, and he turned to Luke. “Do we have a few hours?” he asked.

With Nieta gone, the pickup was routine, one private rendezvous in a thousand. What wasn’t routine was the feel of this secret weapon of Thrawn’s. Jaden had spent his entire life feeling the Force around him, although he hadn’t understood what it was until he met Kanan. For years now, it had been a maelstrom. Now he was in the eye of the storm: everything was perfectly still, unnaturally quiet now that the noise was gone.

He got them onto the ship, but there in the cargo hold, he gave in to tears of sheer relief. His breath came in gasps. He had known things were bad. He had not known how bad until the pain lifted away. 

A noise at the entrance to the hold made Jaden jerk in surprise. Usually he was more aware, but usually he had the Force helping his senses. He scrubbed at his face hastily and poked his head out from behind the crates.

Luke wasn’t a tall man, but the way he held himself drew the eye and made you think he was bigger than his body. The impression held even without being able to feel the strength of his presence in the Force. “Good,” he said quietly. “I made contact with some people, but I was hoping you could tell me where your friend is taking those kids.”

Luke looked at him across the hold, frowning slightly, as if he had just noticed something. “Were you…” He paused, then seemed to find other words. “Is now a good time?” He put a hand to his temple, then shook his head and moved closer. He circled Jaden, his head tilted slightly. “Are you masking your Force signature?” he asked. 

“Uh.” Jaden leaned back a little, startled to suddenly have Luke in his space like this. “No. It’s the cargo.” He pointed down at the crates. “You shouldn’t be able to reach the Force at all this close to them.”

There was a moment, and then Luke winced. “I can’t. That’s so strange.”

He stood there a few moments longer, breathing slowly, his eyes slightly unfocused. Close to, there was strain at the corners of his mouth. “It is,” Jaden said, his voice dropping like this was a confession. 

“You look...different, without the Force,” Luke said. He shook his head and smiled a little, awkwardly. “Don’t ask me how.”

Jaden couldn’t help himself. “Better or worse?” 

Luke’s eyes focused on him again, sweeping up and down, taking the question seriously. Jaden regretted it immediately; his skin crawled with the scrutiny. Luke’s smile only softened. “I don’t know if it’s either. You’re just easier to look at.”

Jaden nodded and swallowed hard. It wouldn’t stay that way for long. “About the kids,” he said. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“They’re…” Jaden raised a hand, scraping it through his hair. “Nieta and I, like I said, we serve a powerful master. He wants more trainees. Initiates. He’s looking for an apprentice, and Nieta thinks he’s going to choose one of us after all, but I don’t think so. I think it’s going to be one of them, or someone he hasn’t found yet.”

“Why?”

“He wants someone more powerful. Someone more his. I’m...me, and Nieta has all these ideas and plans. Snoke doesn’t want someone with vision, he wants someone who shares his vision.”

“So he’s taking these kids for training,” Luke said. “Where will he train them? Where are his headquarters?”

“On a ship.” Jaden closed his eyes, trying to play out possible endings to this if he told Luke the whole thing. Thrawn was the one who thought long-term, who made the plans and contacts. Jaden had always made only the decisions necessary in the moment; the less he knew, the less potential for Snoke to pull it out of his mind. If Jaden made any decision other than keeping his mouth shut and putting Luke off the scent, it could change everything.

But was that a bad thing? Of course Thrawn couldn’t ask for help from former Rebels without a lot of groundwork. Jaden’s ruse had been necessary: at first, Snoke had remained in the shadows, not even deigning to speak to his Knights in person. Even now, he was too powerful to fight cleanly. But what purpose did it serve now not to take help?

“He flies with a fleet out in the Unknown Regions,” Jaden said. “He’s not in charge, but he’s pretty high up. About forty capital ships total are out there right now, three Star Destroyers and plenty of light and heavy cruisers.” 

Luke sucked in a breath. “That many? Are they an Imperial remnant?”

“Yeah. You could call ‘em that.”


	4. Chapter Four

The New Republic force gathered in the shadow of a rock large enough to be called a planet, if it had any star to orbit around.

Jaden shivered seeing them all. The ships were such a familiar assortment: the mallet shape of Corellian blockade runners, X-wings and A-wings, even a lone B-wing painted sapphire-blue and orange. He had been able to bring them this far; these coordinates he had memorized, in case of emergency. But the Fleet did not stay precisely in one place, and these uncharted reaches of space were treacherous and impossible to navigate quickly without assistance.

The communications officer beside him cleared her throat, and Jaden turned to her. “I think I finally picked it up,” she said. 

“Let me see.”

Jaden bent over her station; there was familiar-sounding chatter, which was a good sign. He tried the _Lycaon_ ’s frequency, then transmitted his personal code.

A moment later, static fuzzed and then resolved into a distorted voice. “Proteus. Welcome back.”

“Has Knight Nieta returned to the fleet?” Jaden asked.

“She has. She reported her fellow Knight missing in action and blamed him for the partial failure of her mission.”

“Well. That’s not exactly a lie. Would you prefer the briefing in person?”

“I’ll send a patrol to your coordinates,” Thrawn said.

“That won’t work unless you have someone you can trust with the whole truth.”

There was a pause. “Then I shall order a shuttle.”

“All right, but don’t shoot if you see company. I’ll meet you.”

Sabine had come to stand just behind him, and she looked at him curiously. “Still not gonna tell us who your mysterious partner is?”

“My cover might be blown, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to blow anyone else’s,” Jaden said. 

Sabine nodded, looking troubled. “Well,” she said. “It looks like I caught you just in time.” She reached into a pouch at her side and pulled out a familiar metal cylinder. Jaden’s eyes locked on it as the world screeched to a halt. 

“My old lightsaber,” he said. He reached out, then hesitated, his hand hovering over the weapon.

“I was only taking care of it. You might need it.” Sabine’s eyes were far away, perhaps back on the terrible day when he had left the lightsaber to her. 

“I don’t know if I’m…”

“Jaden.” Her voice took on a familiar impatient tone. “You’re going against a Sith lord. Even if you don’t think you’re a Jedi, a Jedi’s weapon will help you.” Her eyes were fierce as she held the lightsaber hilt out to him. “Try not to waste the last eleven years of our lives by dying on me, okay?”

Jaden took the lightsaber, feeling the grip settle into his hand, the well-known weight. His chest ached hollowly. “I won’t let it go to waste,” he said, and brushed past her, heading for the docking bay. His hand absently found a place on his belt to hook his lightsaber, and he was aware of the reassuring weight as he borrowed a starfighter and set off into the black of space.

Thrawn met him at the airlock, standing with his hands folded behind his back as Jaden dropped silently to the floor. Jaden straightened, and felt something inside him settle. The last days had been wonderful and horrible and unsettling. This was familiar. 

“I got the ysalamiri,” he said, without preamble. 

“I am glad to hear it.” Thrawn’s voice was icy, and he looked at Jaden with a cold distrust that he was startled to realize he hadn’t seen in a while. “I would like you to explain the force you have brought to our doorstep and why you have chosen to disrupt our plans.”

Jaden felt his temper rise, a coil of rage burning up his throat and threatening to spill out into words. He bit it down, his jaw creaking. “I’m not disrupting anything. The plan can still go forward, I just need a way onto the ship. Those ships are my ticket in, as long as you agree to help.”

Thrawn’s eyes flicked over him. As if he had read something in Jaden’s face, he let his arms relax at his sides and stepped aside to let Jaden past. “By all means, brief me on this...plan.”

* * *

“This is what the Rebellion became?” Jaden murmured to Sabine, watching the officers settle into their seats. They were serious, brisk, dressed in navy blue with yellow accents. The starbird emblem gleamed on every sleeve. Mixed in were a few pilots in telltale orange jumpsuits.

“Well.” Sabine glanced over at them. “We still have a navy, but it’s a lot smaller than it used to be. Politics.”

Luke stepped to the front of the briefing room, smiling. There was a ripple as every eye in the room turned towards him. Even officers much older than he was looked at him with respect. “I’m sure you’ve all been briefed on the size of the fleet we’re approaching,” he said. “This isn’t a straight fight. We’re focused on rescue and reconnaissance here.”

He pressed a button on the table in front of him. Jaden recognized the image: it was a diagram of the Fleet they had made together, drawing on his best recollections. The three Star Destroyers of Rectifier Squadron were marked by icons of the distinctive silhouette; the other ships were mere dots.

“We’ve got two main objectives,” Luke explained. “The first is getting an extraction team in here to get the captives out,” he said, stabbing a finger at one of the Destroyers. “That’s my focus. Commander Dallin?”

Dallin, a Mon Calamari, nodded. “The rest of us will be working the recon side. We’re going to try to get probes in there, but even then, we’ll need to hold position long enough to get a good read of this fleet. That means sensors working overtime on all the larger ships.” He stopped, looking around at the officers and pilots gathered around the table.

“I know none of us wanted to see an Imperial force this big again. We’re still feeling Jakku. We need to keep their attention focused, but I don’t want any needless heroics. If your ship is in true danger, withdraw. This isn’t the time to fight them.”

Luke let the silence hang for a moment, then glanced towards the handful of starfighter pilots. “Most of you will be providing defense to the main force. Captain Roke, you’ll be organizing that. Are the others the volunteers?”

Captain Roke was a slight woman with steel-grey hair, dressed in orange like her subordinates. “Yes, sir.”

“I need you to pick two to fly with the extraction team. The other two will be on solo recon, dropping probes along the edges of the fleet.”

Roke didn’t hesitate a moment. “Kalga and Lin for the extraction team.”

“Step forward?” Luke looked over the pilots. A tall Duros with blue-black skin and a human man with red hair braided back from his face rose from their seats. Luke turned slightly towards Jaden and Sabine, and they took their cues and stepped forward as well. A few of the officers seemed to notice them for the first time; they had been standing against one of the walls.

Luke nodded. “I will be taking a gunship with these four into the heart of the Fleet. We already have something arranged that should get us close to the Destroyer, hopefully into the hangar itself. From there, the challenge will be rescue and then escape. We may need cover on the way out. Yes?”

The officer who had signaled his intent to speak looked at Jaden and Sabine with mild consternation, then said, “How do you plan to get close enough to land?”

Jaden caught Luke’s eyes, then stepped forward. “I have a contact in command. We’ll join up with one of their patrols…”

* * *

Jaden paced the length of their transport. Through transparisteel, hyperspace flickered and churned, casting strange shadows inside the ship. It could have been much worse; Thrawn’s course calculations would stop them running into any surprises. 

No: this was only waiting, in the chrysalis of hyperspace, for the battle to come.

They burst into realspace and a patrol closed with them almost immediately: three arrow-shaped starfighters. He saw Sabine’s hands tighten into white-knuckled fists, but no one opened fire. The radio crackled, and a voice said, “This is Sickle Leader. Fall into formation.”

“Acknowledged, Sickle Leader,” said Lin, the human pilot. Smoothly, they joined the starfighters, which fanned out around them. Jaden and Luke had not looked long among the ships at their disposal before they found a gunship that would fit in just fine with one of Thrawn’s patrols. 

Luke let out a long, slow breath. Jaden found himself distracted by the fall of blond hair over his forehead, by the pale eyelashes pressed delicately against his cheek. If Sabine was tense and Jaden restless, Luke was the calm at the center of the storm, his hands lying quiet in his lap and his face blank. Jaden wasn’t sure if he was working very hard at it, or if he had seen and done so much that this was just another day in the life.

They continued along the patrol vector, sweeping empty space. Sickle Leader’s voice interrupted the pilots’ tense banter. “Looks like our patrol’s extended. We just pulled escort duty. Shuttle on course to meet us.”

Sure enough, a sleek shuttle joined the patrol, which settled gracefully around it. 

“Is it Big Blue?” one of the Sickle pilots said.

“Lucky for you he’s not here to hear that. Nah, courier droid,” Sickle Leader said.

“He doesn’t listen to the radios.”

“You wanna bet your commission?”

Slowly, the _Revenant_ grew from a speck surrounded by other specks into a recognizable shape. Sabine curled her lip as they moved into tractor beam range. “To think I’d hoped we blasted every last one of these things out of the sky,” she said. 

“At least it’s not another Death Star,” Luke muttered. “There’s not another Death Star, right?”

“A what?” Jaden said. The other two turned to look at him, and he shrugged. “I guess that happened after I left.”

“You don’t want to know, kid,” put in the Duros pilot, Kalga. “Scanners showing three Star Destroyers in this mess. Is that all of ‘em?”

“That’s all of them,” Jaden said. 

“I’ll send the signal.”

Jaden felt the tiny shiver as the tractor beam took hold, and the patrol glided smoothly towards the _Revenant_ ’s hangar bay. Sabine and Luke stood, and Jaden shouldered the heavy pack he had brought with him. While the Stormtroopers met Thrawn’s courier droid, the three of them slipped down the boarding ramp of their ship.

The squad of troopers was focused on the droid, but various others milled around the hangar bay. Sabine signaled silently, and they followed her pointing finger to spot the same opening she had: a small corridor, not currently watched. Jaden nodded, and the three of them moved with purpose towards it.

They had almost made their mark when an officer stopped them, looking them up and down with confusion. Sabine and Luke wore black, not quite Stormtrooper-casual, but not as eye-catching as their preferred modes of dress. The officer’s eyes flicked over them, then to Jaden. “I’m the deck officer,” he said. “You all need to report to my station to check in.”

His tone was calm and authoritative, but something in his eyes was brittle. Jaden held his gaze, drawing himself up. He didn’t need the Force to intimidate this man, only the threat of it. “Would you like to explain that to Snoke when I’m late to my meeting?” he asked, raising his hand.

The officer’s throat bobbed as he glanced at Jaden’s hand. The rest of him seemed to be frozen in place. Finally, he gave a jerky shake of his head. 

“That’s what I thought,” Jaden said, and brushed past him with the others following in his wake. 

“Where does this lead?” Sabine said as soon as the officer was gone. 

“Don’t worry, we’re heading in the right direction. Just taking the long way through the supply section rather than the way that cuts straight through to where we’re going.” 

This section was always bustling. Jaden had scrounged food here rather than try to eat with the other Knights at first. He was surprised to realize he was still familiar with the best ways to sneak through, right down to a gut instinct to pull the others out of the way when a particularly ornery cook appeared in the corridor like a storm cloud. 

“I’m technically banned from this part of the ship,” he muttered to the others as they waited.

“Some things never change,” Sabine replied.

When they reached Snoke’s private area of the ship, the entire mood of the place changed. The inside of a Star Destroyer was sterile but could hardly be called lifeless: it was always full of people and droids going about the endless business of running a ship of this size, and all the attendant noise and motion. Silence fell like a palpable weight here.

Jaden stepped up to the ray-shield that blocked the way, stripping off one of his gloves. He pressed his hand flat against a pad beside the entrance. A moment later, the shield flickered off. 

Blood-red carpet stretched across the floor before them. The lights changed once they stepped through, both dimmer and somehow flattening the difference between light and shadow. The sound of their footsteps dissipated before it reached their ears. Jaden stopped and turned to look at Luke and Sabine.

“If you turn right,” he said, “the kids should be that way. You should be able to get them out on your own.”

Sabine’s eyes narrowed. “No. You’re not doing this again.”

Jaden put his hands on her shoulders, taking a moment to memorize her face anew. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I am. Go save those kids. You want to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

Sabine took a deep breath, closing her eyes. “I still don’t think this is the right way,” she said.

“Trust me.”

They hugged, tight and ferocious, and then Jaden looked at Luke. It was hard to look at him. He couldn’t have explained why in that moment if he tried, only that it made him ache. He wanted to be Luke, stepping forward into a galaxy of possibilities. He wanted to hold onto him. He wanted to learn more about him. He wanted to take him up on his offer.

He was only stepping away from a friend he’d never made, a future he had never touched.

Luke stepped forward and wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling him in. Jaden’s head was mashed against his neck, his nose in Luke’s hair. “Thanks,” Jaden muttered. Luke just squeezed him, then stepped away, setting off at a run in the direction Jaden had pointed out. Sabine gave him a last, long look, then followed.

_Let go._

No.

_Let it fuel you._

Loss was easy to summon: years of compounded loneliness and the fresh pain of losing real friendship again. He let it churn and boil. Fear. That was easy, too: not just the fear of dying, but the terror at what might happen if this fleet grew and tried to take on the galaxy again. Lothal burning. People dying. Then anger. His entire lifetime, people just like Snoke had been clawing their way to power by ruining other people’s lives. Lives they didn’t even see, much less care about destroying. 

His parents.

Refugees on Lothal.

Kanan.

Greela’s family.

Inara.

The raw emotion inside him spun and raged like a hurricane, pushing him forward towards Snoke’s audience chamber. He almost didn’t see the shadow beside the door until Nieta’s blade was at this throat, hot enough to burn. He threw himself back, and then his lightsaber was in his hand, green meeting red.

Nieta’s eyes went wide, then narrowed viciously. “I knew it,” she said. “You reeked of Jedi.”

The plan came to Jaden almost without thought. “I’m going to kill Snoke,” he said. “Do you want to help me, or do you want to spend the rest of your life begging for scraps of respect?”

She faltered, just for a moment, and Jaden pressed forward, their crossed blades growling an eerie harmony. “He will never make you an apprentice,” he said. “If he was ever going to make either of us apprentice, he would have done it already. And is that the peak of your ambition? To be a student? You could have been a master in your own right.”

Nieta’s eyes locked on his, and her lips parted. He could see, almost, her own pain, her frustration, longing, hatred as she was stolen from her home, raised by Inquisitors, rose in the Empire, lost everything, joined Snoke, was pushed down again and again, stood back up every time with fire in her eyes. For a moment, he could admire her. For a moment, he could use that admiration.

“He’s not too strong for us now,” he said. “Can’t you feel it? The Force has deserted this ship. We can take him together.”

Her face went distant, searching, and then all of her focus returned to him at full intensity. “Are you fighting him as a Sith, or a Jedi? Which is it, _ren’jidai_?”

“Does it matter?” Jaden said. “I want to kill him more than I want to kill you right now.”

“Sith, then,” Nieta said, and she smiled, looking as if she planned to sink her teeth into Snoke’s neck. “Let’s fight.”

They entered the audience chamber like paired homing missiles, locked on Snoke. He stood from his throne languidly, watching them across the black lake of the floor. Smiling like a father looking at his favorite child, he reached out a hand. Then, the expression drained slowly away, along with whatever words he had been about to speak.

Instead, he climbed up the back of his throne like a spider, finding a handhold on the wall and pushing off. Jaden buried his lightsaber in the throne with a hiss and the hot tang of melting metal. Snoke landed in a crouch and rose, a lightsaber hilt in his hand. He ignited it and held it out in a guard position.

“What trickery is this? You think to overpower me?” Snoke said.

Nieta was behind him, and he spun to meet her blade with his. They fought, always caging Snoke between them, but he was quicker than Jaden had realized. Snoke’s physical form had always been a mystery; clearly, it was as powerful as his mind.

Snoke and Jaden’s blades met again and again, and Nieta backed away, circling and watching. He understood. He was alone. No Force to back him, no ally, only his own strength and speed.

“Do you really think you can prevail?” Snoke taunted. “You are nothing. Everything you are, I have given you, and I have not given you enough to defeat me.”

“You’re wrong.” Jaden grunted as he caught a thrust on his blade and pushed it aside. He stepped forward, pressing Snoke back in a flurry of blows. “You gave me nothing except a chance to get close.” He snapped out a kick, and Snoke caught his ankle, pushing him backwards. Jaden went skidding across the glassy floor, his lightsaber flickering out.

“You will die as nobody,” Snoke said, suddenly looming over him. Jaden rolled to avoid his blade. It smashed into the floor beside him, melting the stone. He crawled away and regained his feet, circling Snoke as he got his breath back.

“If I die,” he panted, “I will die as a Jedi facing a Sith.”

As he spoke it, he knew it to be true. Not because he hoped to kill a great evil, but because he knew what he was fighting to preserve. Sabine, Luke, his crew, Lothal, whatever precious light the galaxy had kindled in the years since he had left it. He raised his blade in a ritual salute, and plunged back into the fight.

They fought, this time, like fury incarnate. Neither of them was used to fighting like this without the Force, and it showed. Once, Snoke instinctively threw up a hand instead of ducking and came close to losing it. Jaden’s muscles screamed as he forced them through movements usually aided by the Force.

Jaden was the first to slip. He lunged in, thinking he had an opening, and Snoke reversed his grip and slapped his lightsaber into Jaden’s side. His knees buckled, and he heard his own voice choke on a yell. Pain throbbed with every beat of his heart, so big and so shocking at first that it filled the world.

He could smell burning meat.

His fingers scrabbled past the shreds of his shirt and found charred flesh. He drew in a sharp gasp. Pain blazed even at that light touch. Jaden focused his eyes with effort at the battle before him, swirls of red moving away from him as Snoke pressed Nieta back.

Red. Hum. Crash. A defiant shout, the words garbled and blurred.

  
_IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A mixed media drawing with bright white highlights contrasting vivid, chalky base colors. Three figures in a vast room, an expanse of deep, jewel-like red bounded by dark black shadows. Snoke's free hand is thrown up and behind him as he thrusts his red lightsaber towards Nieta, whose own red lightsaber is raised to block him. Jaden stands separate. His hair is flying around his head as if in a strong wind, and his raised lightsaber is a streak of bright green that strongly contrasts the rest of the drawing._  
_art by[Amrita_Vein](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amrita_Vein/pseuds/Amrita_Vein)_

_“Proteus, do you copy? Proteus, respond.”_

Jaden jerked back to himself, scrambling to press the button on his commlink that would let him answer. Thrawn’s voice had come through without his answering. He must have sent through an emergency code. “I’m here,” he said.

“If you are not yet out, you need to get out as soon as possible,” Thrawn said, the distortion not covering the urgency in his tone. “I fear you are about to lose the opportunity.”

“What? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” Thrawn said. A new fear gripped Jaden at the words. “Get out. Now.”

Jaden blinked and looked up. Snoke was winning. If he didn’t rejoin Nieta soon, he would have to fight him alone, and he didn’t think he could take Snoke with him. He had been wrong. They had all been wrong. But there was something more pressing. He keyed in the extraction team’s comm frequency. “Are you gone yet?” he asked.

“Negative.” Sabine’s voice was grim. “We got pinned down by a group of Stormtroopers. Still trying to break through and get back to the ship.”

“How many?”

“A dozen,” Luke said.

“There will be more on the way.” Jaden looked down at his gauntlet, at his lightsaber, at the duel raging before him. Nieta moved like lightning made flesh, Snoke like the inexorable darkness of the storm.

_You can’t do anything. You’re done._

No.

Jaden rolled onto his good side, then pushed himself onto his hands and knees. He stayed for a moment, breathing, until he knew he wouldn’t fall again. He hooked his lightsaber onto his belt, and then with a surge of motion he stumbled to his feet.

He didn’t have time to stare at Snoke, to contemplate the years of work he was leaving undone. Thrawn had sounded as near panic as Jaden had ever heard him, and Sabine and Luke and the children were still on board.

He knew what he was fighting for.

He ran for the door. The black floor seemed endless, but finally his feet found carpet and he nearly fell again, unprepared for the change in texture.

Down the corridor he ran, strands of hair falling into his eyes, his side screaming, feet clumsy, but his mind sure and steady. “Where are you?” he said harshly into his commlink.

“We took a different route than we came in. These look like…offices?” Jaden could hear the distinctive sound of Sabine’s blasters in the background.

“I know where you are,” Jaden said. “Tell the fleet it doesn’t matter if they got their readings. We all need to get out of here.”

“What? Why?”

“Just trust me!” He ducked down the same corridor where he had last seen Luke and Sabine, but followed it towards the front of the ship. His mind locked on the rhythm of running until he heard the sound of blasterfire and shook himself out of his daze. He had his lightsaber out and ignited before he turned the corner, even if the pull of muscles made spots dance before his eyes.

He barely took in the children huddled behind Sabine and Luke. He waded in to stand beside them, deflecting blasterfire.

“Sabine, did you bring any explosives?” he asked.

“Please. It’s like you don’t know me,” she said. Her blaster bolt hit true, knocking down a trooper. She holstered one blaster and produced a couple of small globes. “Got an idea that doesn’t risk cutting off our escape route?”

“That’s not our escape route,” Jaden said. There was a doorway not far behind the troopers’ position, currently open, but that could change. “Get ‘em back behind that door.”

Sabine handed him one of her blasters. “Cover me.”

Jaden started to lay down covering fire, and Sabine broke out from their position, running forward. She tossed the bombs in a smooth arc, then ducked into an empty office. The Stormtroopers stumbled back from the beeping spheres. A couple, too slow, went flying.

Sabine surged forward. Just as the troopers started to regroup, she slammed her hand down on the door control. One made it through, and she shot him, knocking him back against the door.

“Okay,” she said, turning. “Where now?”

“This way,” Jaden said. He turned to go, and bumped into Luke, who stood closer than he’d realized. He cried out in renewed pain, and Luke caught him, careful of his injury.

“Let me help,” Luke said, slinging his good arm over his shoulder.

Jaden led them through the maze of the ship, all the while aware of two things: the ticking clock on whatever threat Thrawn saw, and Luke’s arm around the small of his back. They finally reached the hangar and found something resembling a kicked anthill.

“Think we can make it?” Jaden said, looking at the suddenly yawning space between them and their ship.

Luke laughed, a warm sound too close to his ear. “Come on. Home stretch.”

They started across. Halfway there, a squad spotted them. There was shouting, and movement, and Jaden fumbled for his lightsaber.

_Fwoom._

Jaden blinked. The gunship had just fired. Where the squad had stood was a black mark; the Stormtroopers had scattered. And then they were running, nothing left to think of but getting there. They ran up the boarding ramp in a straggling line, the ship already starting to lift before it closed.

“Mag shield’s wide open,” Kalga shouted back.

“Well, let’s not wait around for them to realize their mistake,” Sabine replied.

“Already on it,” said Lin.

They broke free of the Star Destroyer, but Kalga was frowning. “Hey, talk to me,” said Lin.

“Got some strange gravity readings,” he said. “Not enough to throw off navigation yet. I’ll keep an eye on them. Make for the others.”

Jaden half fell onto a jump seat. He could see several of their ships in the distance, locked in an exchange of laser fire with the hulking Star Destroyers. _Rectifier_ clearly wasn’t at full capacity; some of the turrets had been knocked out. Good. Expensive and difficult to fix.

A pair of TIEs moved to stop them as they broke from the Star Destroyer, and Luke left to man a gun turret. Sabine sat beside Jaden.

“Let me look at that,” she said softly. Jaden lifted his arm, and Sabine hissed in sympathy. “I don’t know what I should… We’ll be with the other ships soon.” She sprayed something cool on the wound, and Jaden let his head thunk back against the bulkhead as the pain quieted a bit, replaced by numbness.

Someone called a retreat once Jaden’s team put some distance between them and the _Revenant_ , and he watched as the protective bulk of other ships closed around them. There seemed to be some problem with calculating their jump to escape. Adrenaline was just starting to prick Jaden awake again when his commlink came to life with a fuzz of static. 

Thrawn’s voice was half lost in the static. “It’s starting. What’s your status?”

Jaden licked his lips, suddenly realizing what he had done. “I got off the _Revenant_. I don’t know if Snoke’s dead. I left Nieta fighting him.”

“I’m go—” Thrawn’s voice cut out under a rising hiss. “—remain with the Fleet. Good luck.”

Kalga’s voice cut in, alarmed. “Hey, those readings, they’re…”

Jaden turned, scanning the receding Fleet as if he could see the problem with his eyes. A cruiser was closing on the Fleet: the _Lycaon_ , Jaden realized. Then, behind the Fleet, the starfield...rippled. There was no better word for it: it looked as if a giant but invisible hand was twisting the fabric of the universe. Jaden squeezed his eyes shut, feeling queasy.

“What the…” Lin said, and then fell silent.

There was a great, soundless boom.

Jaden’s Force sense, muted for so many days, came back with a feeling like ringing in his ears. Emptiness, but loud in its emptiness. He opened his eyes, and the Fleet was gone.

“Did they all jump to hyperspace?” he asked.

“No.” Kalga shook his head slowly. “I’ve never seen anything like that. I don’t know what it was..”

“Oh.” Jaden fixed his eyes on the spot where he had last seen the _Lycaon_. She was gone, too, and with her, Thrawn. This must have been what he was talking about. And that “good luck,” the only goodbye he would get from him,

He didn’t know how to feel about that. Thrawn had been his greatest enemy. He had also been his only ally. Maybe “good luck” wasn’t such a bad sentiment, after all.

* * *

He dreamed.

In the dream, he was in a bed in a sunlit room. The window stood open, a breeze swirling in from outside. A starbird flitted through the window, its wings flickering as it circled around the ceiling. It lit on his sternum with a faint prickle of claws and a weight that did not hurt. Warmth radiated from it, filling the empty places in this chest. He turned his head, and Kanan sat in the chair beside the bed, dozing. A voice rang like a bell, as it had so many years ago: _Rise, Ezra Bridger._

He opened his eyes. The room was real. But when he turned his head, Kanan wasn’t the one dozing in the chair; it was Luke, his blond hair mussed, his chin drooping towards his chest.

“Hey.” His voice came out scratchy.

Luke jerked awake and smiled. “Hey.” He stood, coming up beside the bed. “Your side should be feeling a little better. I think they did some bacta treatment.”

He nodded. There wasn’t much pain just now. “How are the kids?”

“Recovering,” Luke said. “I think the younger one wants to go back to his family, but Marta might stay on.”

He rubbed his eyes, struggling to catch up. “Stay on?”

“We’re at the Temple.” When he still frowned at Luke, Luke clarified, “The Jedi Temple I started. People come here to learn.” His smile turned wry. “Though I’m still learning myself.”

“Got room for one more?” His voice was wistful.

“I was hoping you’d ask that sometime,” Luke said. “You’re welcome at the Temple, Jaden.”

He closed his eyes, savoring the words. But one thing niggled at him, wrongness like an itch in his mind. “No. Not Jaden. My name is Ezra Bridger.”

* * *

The first day he was allowed up, Ezra took the longest shower he could. He avoided the mirror. He didn’t want to be reminded yet how much he still looked like Jaden Mar.

The Temple, it turned out, was a collection of low stone buildings set beside a river. Sunlight played in the leaves of trees. Ezra stood outside and just breathed in the scent of green things for longer than he meant to.

Someone cleared their throat, and he turned, startled.

Frith stood there, her arms crossed. The sight of her sent a shock through him, though he should have known she would be here. She met his eyes for a moment, then looked away. “You helped us get out,” she said. “Why?”

Ezra looked her over, then settled onto the ground, his legs crossed. “Do you really want that answer?” he asked. “I also helped take you away from your family.”

“I’m not going home,” Frith said. “It’s not safe for them.”

He closed his eyes, aching. A new generation of kids like he had been were learning fear. “I needed to make something right,” he said quietly. “Erase some of the harm.”

“What about the rest of it?”

Ezra opened his eyes and looked up into Frith’s face. She was all blazing determination: anger, a little fear, but not tainted with it. “I failed to stop the source of it,” he said. He could have let despair drag him down—the enormity of the battle he had given up—but he couldn’t bear to dump that on Frith. He thought about what Kanan might have told him, or any of the wiser people in his life. “One failure,” he said slowly, “is never the end. I guess I’ll just have to keep working.”

Frith took in a deep breath, and Ezra had no idea what she was about to say. She just let it out instead, her hands falling to her sides. “Then do that,” she said. Ezra nodded, and closed his eyes again. After a moment, he heard faint scuffs as she sat on the ground as well. “What are you doing?”

Ezra said, “I thought I might try to meditate. Did they teach you about that yet?”

“A little.” He cracked an eye open, and saw Frith sitting with her chin propped up on one knee. He barely stopped himself smiling. Whoever taught her meditation would be having fits. “What if I want to see?”

“Why?” Ezra asked.

“Because I don’t know if I can trust you being here, and when our teachers meditate, you can feel they’re all right,” she said.

“How about we make a deal.” Ezra opened his eyes all the way again, meeting Frith’s. “Give me some time to sort out my head, and then I’ll let you in on any meditation session you want. Okay?”

Her eyes narrowed, but then she nodded.

“Now, go find whatever lesson you’re supposed to be in,” Ezra said. Her scowl told him he had guessed just right. “Go on.”

Ezra closed his eyes, and let the sunlight buoy him. Distantly, he heard Frith clambering back up through the carpet of leaves. He didn’t let himself slip into true meditation, but it was a comfort all the same.

* * *

“Where’s Sabine, anyway?” It took Ezra longer than he wanted to admit to ask it. He assumed at first that she was busy, and after that first day on his feet, he had to pace himself because healing was exhausting work. He thought he had been here for a few weeks at this point and there was no sign of her.

Luke smiled. He had taken to checking in on Ezra in the evenings after dinner. Tonight, he sat with a datapad, occupied with some administrative task. “She didn’t tell you? She went off to gather the rest of your crew. Ahsoka should be coming soon, too, she said she had a couple other friends to gather.”

Ezra almost sat bolt upright, then winced and lowered himself back against his chair gingerly. “What? Do you know when to expect them?”

“Not for a little while yet.” Luke looked concerned. “Why, do you not want to see them?”

“No, I want to.” He wanted to with everything in his heart. It hadn’t yet occurred to him that he could, that he _would_ , see them again soon. “But not like…this.” He waved a hand at his face.

Luke looked up, and though Ezra wasn’t looking, he could feel his eyes on him. “Back when we rescued you, I made an offer,” he said carefully. “That’s still open, you know.”

Ezra nodded. “I planned on taking you up on it.” He had been trying on his own, snatching short moments to drop down into the meditation he had always used before. Fear had stopped him every time he touched the edges of the pain. What if he could never come back? He took a deep breath. “Okay. Is now a good time to start?”

The chair Ezra sat in was placed at the window, in a narrow space between it and the bed. Luke stood and settled on the edge of Ezra’s bed. Their knees nearly touched. “What do you need help with?” Luke asked. “You told me before that you were able to come back if you could remember what it felt like to…” His eyes went distant. “How did you put it? To touch the light.”

“To be part of the light,” Ezra said. But he reached out and took Luke’s hands, feeling the threads of light flowing through him. Luke was a beacon in the Force. That was as good a focus as any, when before he had used distant stars to draw his mind out of the shadows. “I think if you stay with me…” he said softly. “Just don’t…don’t be alarmed if I sound like I’m in pain.”

Ezra reached out, shuffling through the few personal items he kept in the drawer beside the bed and pulling out a kyber crystal. Luke looked at it in surprise. “Mine,” Ezra said. “An old one.” He tipped it into Luke’s hands, then closed his own over them. He let his mind pour into their joined hands and the crystal, feeling the thrum of blood and the dry warmth of skin. Their pulses beat slightly out of time with each other.

Now that he focused on him, Luke was filled to the brim with light, a quiet sun somehow come down to meet him. His own signature was caged in an ugly snarl, but he was startled to realize sparks glinted within, reflecting Luke’s light. When had that happened?

Breaking from his usual meditation, he dove down to chase the sparks, and memories poured into him. The first sight of Sabine’s face after so many years. A bigger spark: the moment she had shown him Jacen’s hologram. Luke, telling him he was easier to look at. Biggest of all: The moment he had declared himself a Jedi before Snoke.

_I am a Jedi. I am Ezra Bridger. I choose to return to the light._

The dark side clung to him, assailing him with every terrible image his mind had stored up, with all of the harm he had done trying to set things right. He pressed through. These things could not be ignored, and they would not go away, but staying down in the well of despair would not erase them. He had promises to keep, and a future waiting for him.

If he could just. Take. That final step.

He gasped as he felt the weight lift at last. He opened his eyes to find Luke’s staring into his, wide and brilliant and full of surprise. “You said it would hurt,” Luke said.

“It did,” Ezra said. “Like a scab healing.” He laughed, feeling weightless, and felt tears gathering in his eyes at the same time. It was easy. It had been easy, in the end. The light had been there for him all along, just waiting until he was ready to step into it.

Ezra laughed until he cried, and let Luke hold onto him while he did.

* * *

  
_IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A mixed media drawing with bright white highlights contrasting vivid, chalky base colors. The only defined forms are Ezra and Luke, sitting cross-legged facing each other and holding hands. Their bodies lean towards one another, their foreheads nearly touching. Ezra looks astonished, his mouth open and his eyes locked on Luke. Luke is smiling widely. Around them radiates a brilliant sunburst of colors: blue, green, orange, yellow, red, purple._  
_art by[Amrita_Vein](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amrita_Vein/pseuds/Amrita_Vein)_

* * *

For the first time since he had come to the Temple, Ezra liked what he saw in the mirror.

He still looked like Jaden Mar in a lot of ways. He kind of liked the half-shaved hair, although the hairstyle had at first been an attempt to dress the part, along with the black-based wardrobe. It was looking pretty scruffy, though. He thought he’d let Sabine take a crack at it.

He was done with wearing black. The Jedi Temple kept a cache of extra clothes—Ezra wasn’t the only person who had come in with very few possessions—and today he wore a loose-fitting wrap shirt and leggings in cream and tan.

Best of all, his eyes were blue again. He had never stopped thinking of these eyes as his eyes, and the angry yellow stain as something other. He knew he could never phrase the way the sight made him feel to anyone else. It wasn’t just about how he looked. He had missed being himself.

His commlink beeped, and Ezra stared at it, his breath catching in his chest. He answered it. “Yeah?”

“Just cleared ‘em to land,” Luke said. “You’d better come if you want to meet them.”

Ezra pushed away from the sink, and then found himself running, eyes searching the sky as he burst out of the healer’s hall and started towards the landing pad. There, through a break in the trees, a familiar shape. His heart swelled in his chest. The _Ghost_!

He stood beside Luke, waiting for the ship to land, with a grin on his face and nervousness fizzing through him. Luke just waited, though a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as well.

The boarding lamp lowered, and Ezra suddenly didn’t know what to do. He was staring, drinking in the sight of them as they clustered there like a man dying of thirst. Hera. Zeb. Sabine. Chopper. And, peeking out from behind his mother, Jacen Syndulla.

Chopper made a rude sound and powered forward into the back of Zeb’s legs, and Zeb stumbled, spitting out a, “ _Hey!_ ” That seemed to break the spell. Chopper zoomed forward, flinging droid profanities all the way, and whacked Ezra around the shins a few times. Ezra laughed and fended him off. “Hey, hey. Whatever happened to hello?”

Zeb wasn’t far behind, and he almost picked Ezra up in a hug before Ezra flung his hands out. “Hey, not so fast. Still healing up.” Ezra stepped forward, though, and wrapped his arms around his old friend. He was comforted by the familiar bulk—and, yeah, even smell—of him. “Missed you, buddy.”

“Don’t go doing it again,” Zeb growled, and ruffled Ezra’s hair. Ezra felt a hand on his elbow, and turned into Hera’s hug. His throat tightened, and he buried his face in her shoulder, holding on tight. Whatever had happened in the intervening years, however much he’d grown, she was still one of the adults who’d seen him through his teenage years. 

“Hey, Hera,” he said, his voice rough.

“Hey, there.” She pulled away a little, her eyes almost unbearably gentle. “I hear we’re calling you something new?”

“No,” Ezra said. “No, Ezra’s fine. I changed my mind.” He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. “I’ll…I’ll tell you all about it later.” He glanced up and around. Sabine still stood at the top of the boarding ramp, her arms crossed, but a smile on her face. She nodded to him.

One other person had not stayed with the ship. Jacen stood a few feet behind his mother, looking at Ezra with open curiosity. Ezra glanced up at Hera, and she smiled. “Come on. I want you to meet somebody.”

* * *

The _Lycaon_ had flickered out of realspace for only a heartbeat. In that silent moment, every light, every readout, on the bridge went dark. The emergency lights flicked on, casting an eerie red glow over everything.

“Sir,” said the sweating officer beside him. “I can’t bring up the sensors.” 

“Use your eyes, Lieutenant,” Thrawn said, his own fixed on the viewscreen.

They had not been pulled into empty space. Beyond the ships of Rectifier Squadron lay a planet, dark and huge and flickering with electrical storms. And circling the planet was the largest complex of shipyards Thrawn had seen since the Empire. Larger, perhaps, for though the ships he could see were all under construction, they were all the shape of Imperial Star Destroyers, and twice again as large.

There were dozens of them.

“I think,” Thrawn said calmly, “that we had better see if we can restore power to the communications system. I expect we will be receiving new orders soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, y'all. This is the longest fic I've ever finished. It's been a journey. I've been writing this particular fic since January - although it was born from a Twitter thread in, I think, November. @coasterchild deserves all the credit for this concept, but I'm glad I sat down and hashed out a full-length version of how Ezra's journey back to the light could go.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy reading this; I enjoyed writing it. (Tore my hair out over it plenty; but enjoyed).
> 
> Also: if you would like to leave kudos/comments to Amrita_Vein, who created the illustrations, [there is a separate post here for the art](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/swbb2020/works/24011863).
> 
>  **ETA:** I recorded [an audio commentary](https://archive.org/details/all-you-see-is-my-ghost-commentary) on this fic for Voiceteam 2020, so if you're curious about the writing process, particularly thinking through the worldbuilding, have at.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for All you See is My Ghost](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24011863) by [Amrita_Vein](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amrita_Vein/pseuds/Amrita_Vein)




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